Village Journals
Resonate your identity with Naseeb journals. Express your opinions, share your thoughts, post your writings and connect with like minded people through the power of expression.
Resonate your identity with Naseeb journals. Express your opinions, share your thoughts, post your writings and connect with like minded people through the power of expression.
Paying for Peace, or not.
GOP-led panel slashes foreign aid program
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By Pauline Jelinek
June 16, 2005 | Washington -- Rebuffing President Bush's wishes, a Republican-led House panel slashed the administration's request for a program that aids global development.
Under the Millennium Challenge Account, countries are eligible for extra aid only if they control corruption, invest in health and education and encourage trade and private investment.
In 2002, Bush called for "a new compact for global development, defined by new accountability for both rich and poor nations alike. Greater contributions from developed nations must be linked to greater responsibility from developing nations."
He requested $3 billion in the fiscal 2006 budget, but the House Foreign Operations Subcommittee on Thursday recommended $1.75 billion, which is $262 million more than last year.
Meanwhile, the head of the program, Paul Applegarth, said he was resigning. In a resignation letter to Bush dated Wednesday, he did not give a reason for his decision.
The initiative announced by Bush in 2002 has been slow to get off the ground, and projects have been approved for just four countries. Presidents of five African nations said in a meeting this week with Bush that bureaucratic bottlenecks made it nearly impossible to access the aid.
Overall, lawmakers are proposing only a tiny increase in U.S. foreign aid in the coming budget year, rejecting an 11 percent jump requested by Bush.
Decrying what they said were difficult choices needed to keep overall spending down, members of a House Appropriations subcommittee Thursday approved and sent to the full panel a bill for $20.27 billion that included health, education, counter-narcotics and military aid to poor nations.
It is only $730 million above the $19.54 appropriated in fiscal year 2005 and slashed more than $2 billion from Bush's request of $22.82 billion.
Democrats lamented the relatively small amount to be allotted for aid programs compared to the estimated $350 billion military budget being considered -- a figure that doesn't include emergency funds for the continuing wars.
"It always amazes me that people are willing to shove huge amounts of money out the door" to pay for wars, "but are often unwilling to provide tiny amounts to prevent them," said Rep. David Obey, D-Wis.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Pauline Jelinek
June 16, 2005 | Washington -- Rebuffing President Bush's wishes, a Republican-led House panel slashed the administration's request for a program that aids global development.
Under the Millennium Challenge Account, countries are eligible for extra aid only if they control corruption, invest in health and education and encourage trade and private investment.
In 2002, Bush called for "a new compact for global development, defined by new accountability for both rich and poor nations alike. Greater contributions from developed nations must be linked to greater responsibility from developing nations."
He requested $3 billion in the fiscal 2006 budget, but the House Foreign Operations Subcommittee on Thursday recommended $1.75 billion, which is $262 million more than last year.
Meanwhile, the head of the program, Paul Applegarth, said he was resigning. In a resignation letter to Bush dated Wednesday, he did not give a reason for his decision.
The initiative announced by Bush in 2002 has been slow to get off the ground, and projects have been approved for just four countries. Presidents of five African nations said in a meeting this week with Bush that bureaucratic bottlenecks made it nearly impossible to access the aid.
Overall, lawmakers are proposing only a tiny increase in U.S. foreign aid in the coming budget year, rejecting an 11 percent jump requested by Bush.
Decrying what they said were difficult choices needed to keep overall spending down, members of a House Appropriations subcommittee Thursday approved and sent to the full panel a bill for $20.27 billion that included health, education, counter-narcotics and military aid to poor nations.
It is only $730 million above the $19.54 appropriated in fiscal year 2005 and slashed more than $2 billion from Bush's request of $22.82 billion.
Democrats lamented the relatively small amount to be allotted for aid programs compared to the estimated $350 billion military budget being considered -- a figure that doesn't include emergency funds for the continuing wars.
"It always amazes me that people are willing to shove huge amounts of money out the door" to pay for wars, "but are often unwilling to provide tiny amounts to prevent them," said Rep. David Obey, D-Wis.
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(June 22, 2005 at 3:28pm)
It seems to me that the Millenium Challenge Account functions in much the same way that the World Bank does, in that money is provided conditionally and the conditions are often irrational. What stinks is that poor citizens of corrupt governments are penalized for the actions of a few irresponsible leaders, and the notion that poverty breeds crime which breeds corruption becomes all the more true. If you ask me, this is just blatant racism towards Africa because they do not have anything ot further our interests. The scenario in the article above doesn't surprise me in the least. Last year, when i was studying international development and learning about foreign aid assistance, I came to realize how indefensible and shameful our policies truly are. we give the least aid as apercentage of our GNP out of 22 OECD countries, and we give substantially less than the highest donors (I think it's Denmark and some other Nordic countries who give close to 1 percent and we give like .1 percent). What's more, when people think foreign aid, they think humanitarian assistance- food aid, emergency relief, etcetera, but humanitarian aid hovers around 10-15 percent of our foreign aid assistance, and that's even more disgusting considering that over 20 percent goes to military "assistance" i.e. giving money to Israel and Egypt- and Egypt is actually considered a "middle income" country. The entire international development community knows this and are disgusted. Africa needs assistance more than anywhere. they receive less aid than the Middle East and South Asia despite unarguably more dire conditions. Now, what I find disturbing also, is that there is very little discourse among muslims about this because--and i hope i won't offend too many people by saying this- we as a community have also been racist towards Africa. And I mean that, with the exception of a few leaders, most have turned their heads on African muslim nations. Why?