Larry Nowels

Last week, the House Budget Committee agreed on a Budget Resolution for next year, proposing sharp cuts to International Affairs programs. The discretionary spending total of $49.1 billion is 10.5% below levels for this year and 12.6% less than the Administration’s request for FY2013. This would be the smallest International Affairs budget since FY2008. Moreover,

Yesterday, following months of negotiations, proposals that blew apart, and mounting anxiety over the state of the US economy, lawmakers and the White House finally came together with a deal. The budget package signed by President Obama allows the US debt ceiling to rise, permits borrowing to meet the nation’s obligations, places a down-payment of

Over the next three weeks, Congress is expected to act on budget issues that will potentially have a critical impact on US efforts to fight global poverty and save lives around the world. While these will not be the final decisions on FY2012 appropriations or a blueprint to drive down the federal deficit over the

With many in the global development community bracing for a bad outcome while the White House and House Republicans hammered out the details of a final budget package, the spending measure passed yesterday protected a number of poverty-focused programs from severe cuts. After the House had passed a budget in March that slashed humanitarian assistance

Photo courtesy of Jake Brewer via Flickr Over the past 10 days, we have been absorbing and reacting to developments around not just one, but two budgets that significantly effect global poverty reduction programs. After looking at both, however, you might conclude that they were headed in opposite directions, having far-reaching, but far different impacts

Written with Brooke Riley: Last Thursday marked the end of a 14-month wait for the release of the State Department and USAID’s Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), the first-ever comprehensive review of US development and diplomatic policy. The document is a draft and still requires inter-agency review and comment — the final QDDR will

As promised a year ago, President Obama came to the UN today with his plan to chart a new course for advancing sustainable, equitable economic growth and reducing poverty for the world’s poor. For the first time, the US now has a Global Development Policy that sets forward a clear sense of unified purpose, goals

Late last week, USAID released an updated version of its MDG strategy, which was unveiled at the beginning of August (you can read ONE’s analysis of the original draft here). What’s new in this version? Most notably, the updated document says that the US now has an official development policy, which “sets out the strategic

In case you weren’t tuned in to the State Department’s “Conversations with America” series yesterday, you missed a great preview of next week’s gathering of world leaders in New York City to accelerate and drive the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It starred ONE’s own David Lane and USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah. While

Somewhat buried in the flow of announcements and press releases surrounding the G8/G20 meetings last weekend, the White House issued a statement Friday that President Obama had outlined his vision for a new US policy on global development. This is especially welcome news as it suggests that we’ll soon see the results of a delayed

Cross-posted at the Huffington Post: Global development advocates have been waiting and waiting for President Obama to signal how he intends to act on his bold and ambitious commitments to fight poverty and to promote growth and stability around the globe. The wait appears to have been worth it. Last week, a preliminary draft of

With an overflow and enthusiastic crowd looking on, Secretary of State Clinton swore-in Dr. Rajiv Shah as the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Actually, it was a bit unclear for a moment as to exactly who was sworn-in, with Dr. Shah’s young daughter squirming next to him in her mother’s arms with