What does a doubling of foreign assistance mean?
ONE recently prepared a set of transition documents for President-elect Obama’s transition team. These documents essentially represented ONE’s best effort to put in writing a set of recommendations for how the Obama team could put its vision for development into action after taking office. The booklet included issue specific recommendations that could be implemented both in the short and longer term.
All of these recommendations are meant to fit into Obama’s broader vision for fighting poverty and making the Millennium Development Goals America’s own goals for development. In order to do so, President-elect Obama also committed to double U.S. spending on development assistance by $25 billion. In an effort to tie the two together, ONE’s transition document includes a section outlining the annual expenditures necessary to reach this goal over five years. It lists each of Obama’s existing commitments to development and added those priorities that ONE recommended to fulfill the overall vision. All of these things can be accomplished with an increase of $23.96 billion by fiscal year 2013.
While this increase sounds large, it still only represents less than 1% of the U.S. federal budget and can provide significant assistance to countries struggling to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Some of the priorities and commitments we include are:
- Fully funding PEPFAR, tuberculosis and malaria as authorized in the Lantos-Hyde act passed this year
- Create an initiative to build long-term agricultural capacity
- Work toward universal primary education by signing and funding the Education for All Bill
- Create and small and medium enterprise fund to support economic growth in Africa
These are just a few of the ideas mentioned in the briefing.
The scale up acknowledges that the United States is currently facing a difficult economic crisis and that therefore the new Administration will have to strategically choose which priorities to invest in immediately and which will have to be initiated a year or two down the line. Ultimately however, despite the difficult budget environment facing the U.S. in this upcoming year, ONE hopes that the Obama administration will begin the scale up with a total increase of $4 billion over the spending level in fiscal year 2008 so that those most critical initiatives can begin their scale up. Delaying the effort will only make annual increases required in future years more difficult to achieve. You can view the chart showing scale-up here.
-Erin Thornton, Policy Director, ONE
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December 18, 2008 at 8:31 pm
“What does a doubling of foreign assistance mean?”
More taxes. Where oh where shall we get that money from? Surely we won’t be cutting spending in other areas to fund this mess. Where indeed…
December 18, 2008 at 8:32 pm
…and before anyONE gets here to mention that we CAN afford it. We not only can’t, but shouldn’t either. Socialism is failure.
December 21, 2008 at 10:19 am
“What does a doubling of foreign assistance mean?”
It means a realistic appraisal of the emergent, increasingly multi-polar international order: change or become relic. It means also, efficient alocation of scarce resources: The United States certainly can double its foreign assistance so long as it minimizes waste in our own goverment while simultaneously collaborating more effectively with recipient countries to administer such aid/aasistance to them. Doubling the United States’ foreign assistance means a reversion to polcies that seek to leverage all powers at the disposal of the government of the United States of America – ‘soft’, backed by ‘hard’ power, in international engagements.
Specifically, it means dramatic engagement with recipient’s of our foreign assistance in ways that are tangible and directly impact or truly make a difference in the immediate lives of their ciitizens as to curtail attraction for US’ rivals, and competing powers in a globalizing world. In a nutshell, it means the capacity to adequately equip the Millenium Challenge Corporation,for example, with the capital/resources it needs to achieve its stated aim in given country while making clear to the recipeint country it will be held accountable for the success or lack thereof Millenium Challenge Corporation initiatives in the host country. In sum, the longevity of the ‘political class’ in a given recipient country; [whatever government in power] is contingent upon the success or failure of Millenium Challenge Corporation activities in that particular country.
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December 23, 2008 at 12:41 am
Flowery but flawed. There are way too many differing references concerning the meaning of doubling forgein assistance for it to be specific, as stated for an opener of the second paragraph. Which one of those reasons did you want me to address first for your reasoning that socialism is the new and wonderful “in” thing? (This is a pro-socialism piece, is it not? Did you not state as much in your first sentence when you referenced the need of the United States of America to “change or become relic” or were you busy trying to impress people or baffle them with BS?)
I do like the fact that you’ve basically backed my point though. We can’t afford it. You said so yourself using the condition of “so long as” when refering to how the United States was going to fund this mess. We can’t control our own spending, ergo: more taxes.