The President’s Budget: How Did ONE’s Key Priorities Fare?

Feb 4th, 2010 3:56 PM UTC
By Erin Thornton

Over the past few days on the ONE blog, we’ve been offering you our analysis of President Obama’s 2011 budget request. I thought I would add a few thoughts of my own, with a quick look at how some of ONE’s key priorities fared.

• As we mentioned in an earlier post, the International Affairs budget appears to have increased by $6.1 billion from 2010. But on Monday, the Obama Administration also released details for its 2010 supplemental budget request (additional funds needed for projects that were unknown at the time of the original budget process). If we add these numbers to the 2010 budget base, the difference between the 2010 and 2011 budget actually shrinks to $1.6 billion—a huge difference.

  It’s an important point to note, particularly since the International Affairs budget escaped President Obama’s budget freeze (for issues of national security). A $6.1 billion increase would have painted a rather large bull’s-eye on our priorities moving forward, but a $1.6 billion increase makes that target a whole lot smaller.

• While the 2011 budget does keep us on a path to double foreign assistance (as President Obama promised earlier), it’s important to keep in mind the fact that that commitment to double was intended to achieve a set of even more important qualitative commitments—such as the commitments made to the global health initiative, enhancing food security, improving access to education, and boosting the capacity of USAID and the Peace Corps. While the total numbers are definitely on the rise, sixty percent of the proposed increases for FY2011 are intended for just three countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. ONE did some work when the President first took office that showed that it WOULD be possible to meet those important development goals with the resources made available through a doubling—but as more of the growth goes to strategic states, there’s less of a chance that all of the development goals will be met.
• Agriculture is a big budget winner, with the Administration requesting an additional $750 million for the “Global Hunger and Food Security” initiative. With this new boost, the Administration notes that it’s met its G8 pledge from L’Aquila, Italy ($3.5 billion over 3 years). What’s most important now is to see the detailed policy plans to see how these scaled up resources will be used.
• On Monday, the Administration also released its policy analysis of the Global Health Initiative. ONE has been pleased to see a more comprehensive approach to global health. The budget includes a proposed $351 million increase for maternal and child health and a $108 million increase for Neglected Tropical Diseases and other public threats. But it’s important that the resources are made available to meet ALL of the goals set out in the new strategy. It’s also important that as the strategy takes on new critical areas, that momentum on infectious disease not be lost. In particular, we were disappointed to see a $50 million cut for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI) saw only a $12 million increase—far below their actual need. We’ll keep working with our partners to push these funding levels up and we’ll keep you posted on our progress in the days and months ahead.

TAGS: FY2011 US budget, ONE, Policy News