Upgrade Foreign Aid: Call Your Senators Now

Sep 17th, 2009 12:31 PM UTC
By Emily Stivers

As Americans, our well-being is linked to the lives of others around the world as never before. Today’s global challenges — poverty, hunger, conflict, disease and climate change — threaten prosperity and security in the U.S. and globally. Smart U.S. foreign policy requires not just military strength but also skilled diplomacy, sound economic policy, and innovative approaches to global development. Our foreign assistance programs are a critical part of how we engage the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, the law governing U.S. foreign aid policy is out-of-date. It was written in 1961, and the world has changed drastically since then. We need to upgrade our foreign aid laws and policies to tackle today’s global challenges and make sure our foreign assistance dollars serve us as best they can in the fight against global poverty, hunger and disease. The people we are trying to help deserve no less.

The Foreign Assistance Revitalization and Accountability Act of 2009 (S. 1524) is a real opportunity to “upgrade aid”, and has bipartisan support. Introduced by Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Richard Lugar (R-IN) in July, it was immediately cosponsored by Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Jim Risch (R-ID), Ben Cardin (D-MD), and Bob Corker (R-TN), and has since earned the additional support of Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Robert Casey (D-PA), Tim Johnson (D-SD) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR).

The Kerry-Lugar bill recognizes the importance of global prosperity and security to the national interests of the United States and takes several, critical steps to strengthen U.S. foreign assistance:

1. Establishes that it is U.S. policy to promote global development, good governance and the reduction of poverty and hunger.
2. Restores planning, policy, evaluation and innovation capability to USAID, the U.S. agency responsible for fighting hunger and poverty around the world.
3. Creates an independent evaluation and research innovation group to measure the impact of U.S. development and foreign assistance programs to determine what works, and what doesn’t.
4. Calls for U.S. citizens and foreign aid recipients to have access to web-based, timely, and comparable information on U.S. foreign assistance programs, presented on a program-by-program and country-by-country basis.
5. Enhances USAID’s personnel and human resources capacity to ensure the agency has the technical and policy expertise required to confront today’s global challenges.
6. Creates a single U.S. voice on the ground in developing countries to coordinate and align U.S. development programs with country needs.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be marking up S. 1524 on Tuesday, September 22. Though the bill already has 10 cosponsors, additional Senate cosponsors — especially from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — are needed to demonstrate the growing U.S. support for making our foreign assistance programs better and smarter.

For instructions, talking points and to tell us about your call, click here.

-Emily Stivers

TAGS: Barack Obama, From ONE Members