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Jocilyn Estes
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Tomorrow, USAID Administrator Mark Green heads to Capitol Hill to defend the Trump administration’s FY 2019 foreign assistance budget request. It won’t be easy. Lawmakers have pushed back hard against the drastic cuts to US global development and humanitarian spending proposed by the administration. Here are some specific issues I hope receive attention during tomorrow’s hearing.
Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) and Representative Ed Royce (R-CA) have teamed up with Democratic colleagues Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) and Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) to introduce new legislation that would reform US international food aid to deliver more help to more people in crisis, faster.
Demand for development finance as a key complement to traditional aid is growing, but despite the impressive strength of the US private sector, the US government’s ability to respond—to date— has fallen short. The good news: Congress got the memo.
After over a year without top political leadership, MCC may soon have a new CEO. Sean Cairncross, the Trump administration’s nominee to take the helm of the agency, has his Senate hearing tomorrow—where we’ll get an early look at his vision for MCC.
The Trump administration delivered its FY 2019 budget request to Capitol Hill this week. Containing deep cuts to the international affairs budget, it looks a lot like a repeat of the FY 2018 request. And with a 30 percent reduction in topline spending, few programs were spared. Meanwhile, buried among the rubble are smart reform ideas that run the risk of being overshadowed—or even undermined—by the depth of the proposed spending reductions.
Debt relief is high on the Sudanese government’s agenda. This week’s budget proposals coming out of the White House indicate that Sudan may finally get its wish—but there’s something weird about where the money comes from. Here I offer an alternative.
In 1944, the United States created a blueprint for economic statecraft that relied heavily on a new class of multilateral institutions to pursue US interests in the world. The blueprint itself is now under serious duress in the “America First” strategy of international engagement of the Trump administration.
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Development refers to improvements in the conditions of people’s lives, such as health, education, and income. It occurs at different rates in different countries. The U.S. underwent its own version of development since the time it became an independent nation in 1776. Learn more about Rich World, Poor World: A Guide to Global Development
Not only is the Trump administration supporting a $7.5 billion capital increase for the IBRD (and at that, one that is 50 percent larger than the capital increase supported by the Obama administration in 2010), it has also signed on to a policy framework for the new money that makes a good deal of sense.
When MCC was founded, there was widespread skepticism about the effectiveness of foreign assistance. Many observers, both external and internal to development institutions, agreed that too much aid was being spent on poor projects in service of poorly defined objectives with correspondingly little understanding of what these funds were achieving.
The recent creation of AFRICOM, a U.S. military command for Africa, is but one manifestation of the Pentagon's growing role in development. One-in-five dollars that the U.S. spends on development assistance is now handled by the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Pentagon share of U.S. development spending has increased three-fold in the past five years, to some $5.5 billion annually. In a new CGD working paper, research fellow Stewart Patrick and program associate Kaysie Brown find that while the vast bulk of Pentagon development aid is for Iraq and Afghanistan, the department is also increasingly involved in new initiatives that civilian agencies could undertake. They warn that DoD's growing role in foreign assistance could undermine a broader U.S. approach to development support, and they offer specific recommendations for restoring a more appropriate balance.
CGD and the Brookings Institution recently released the third edition of the Quality of Official Development Assistance (QuODA), a joint venture that measures donor performance across a series of aid quality indicators to encourage governments, institutions, and agencies to disburse more effective, transparent, and efficient assistance.
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