Foreign Aid

The chairman and ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs panel announced Tuesday that they will propose reforming the nation's food aid program as a bipartisan amendment to the pending farm bill. 

Reps. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) said their amendment would save the federal government $215 million a year by allowing the U.S. Agency for International Development to spend up to 45 percent of food aid funds of local food instead of shipping it from the United States. The House is expected to vote on a five-year farm bill this week.

“By enacting these bipartisan, commonsense food aid reforms, we can do more with less – we can feed more starving people, more quickly, at a lower cost,” Royce said in announcing the amendment.

A GOP hearing Thursday on the Obama administration's support for international religious freedom immediately gave way to partisan squabbling after the State Department withdrew its only witness.

The U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, Suzan Johnson Cook, was expected to testify before the Oversight panel, but the State Department withdrew her name when told she'd have to testify alongside non-governmental witnesses. The department says it's long-standing tradition for officials to have their own panels, an argument Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) rejected.

“We're sincerely disappointed that the State Department decided not to make their witness available,” said Chaffetz, chairman of the National Security subcommittee panel holding the hearing. “We believe it's a more effective, more efficient way to conduct a hearing. It allows members of Congress to ask pertinent questions. To suggest that we have to have two panels ... seems a ridiculous use of the Congress's time and efforts.”

House lawmakers pushing for food aid reform garnered key support Wednesday as they seek to tack their priorities to the Farm Bill that's headed to the floor this week.

Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and panel member Karen Bass (D-Calif.) have introduced legislation that would allow the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to buy food locally instead of having to import it from U.S. farmers. The bill has run into opposition from farm state legislators but during a hearing Wednesday received the endorsement of Dan Glickman, Agriculture secretary under President Clinton, and Andrew Natsios, USAID administrator under President George W. Bush.

“The hearing today with former secretary Glickman and Natsios obviously builds support with their endorsement of the initiative,” Royce told The Hill after the hearing. “We will take some of the suggestions [by the witnesses], incorporate them [into the bill] and that would be an underlying vehicle potentially for achieving reforms” in the Farm Bill.

President Obama on Monday revealed his choice to take over as inspector general of the U.S. aid agency, filling a two-year void in oversight of the $20 billion a year foreign aid budget.

Michael Carroll has served as deputy inspector general at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) since May 2012. His nomination comes as the Obama administration is under increased pressure to put in place Inspector Generals for USAID and the State Department following allegations that department higher-ups sought to quash internal probes into allegations that officials used prostitutes.

Obama also named the deputy assistant secretary of State for human rights, Daniel Baer, to serve as U.S.ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. If confirmed, Baer would be the first openly gay U.S. diplomat named to a multilateral institution, and fourth openly gay diplomat to be named ambassador abroad. 

One of the Pentagon’s top strategists said climate change is fundamentally altering how the Defense Department (DOD) evaluates future conflict areas.

Daniel Chiu, the deputy assistant secretary of DOD strategy, said climate change has the Pentagon thinking about impacts on global food and water scarcity, mass migration and the potential for those issues to ignite clashes around the world.

“How we at the Department of Defense need to think about it — not again because we desire any of those to come about — but, frankly, so we can play our part in preventing those types of negative scenarios from emerging in the future,” he said Thursday at an event hosted by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs panel has scheduled a hearing on reforming food aid next week, setting up a bitter fight with farm state lawmakers.

Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) introduced legislation with Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) last month that would eliminate the requirement that food assistance to starving nations be produced in the United States and shipped on U.S.-flagged vessels. The bill closely tracks President Obama's own food aid reform proposal, unveiled in his fiscal 2014 budget blueprint.

“Modernizing U.S. international food aid to help more people facing starvation, more quickly, at a lower cost is common sense, especially given our national debt,” Royce said in announcing Wednesday's hearing. “By reforming food aid, we can reach more people in need, while at the same time saving hundreds of millions of dollars. At this hearing, the Committee will hear from two top food aid experts about the best approaches to improving our current, inefficient system of food aid delivery.”

House lawmakers are gathering signatures on a letter to Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi calling for an “immediate dismissal” of prison sentences against 43 democracy activists, including 16 or 17 Americans, The Hill has learned.

The letter is spearheaded by Reps. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) and Frank Wolf (R-Va.). It comes after an Egyptian court on Tuesday sentenced non-governmental organization (NGO) workers to prison terms as long as five years for allegedly seeking to undermine the Egyptian state and ordered the confiscation of U.S. and other foreign democracy-building organizations.

“We urge you to immediately reconsider this matter and return confiscated property to the NGOs, dismiss charges against all NGO workers , and permit them to continue their work supporting a free, fair and open and democratic society,” the letter states. “In order for the U.S. government and the American people to have any confidence that the Egyptian government is undertaking a genuine transition to a democratic state, under civilian control, where the freedoms of assembly, association, religion and expression are guaranteed and rule of law is upheld, we must see a swift and satisfactory resolution to this case that takes into full account the concerns expressed in this letter, including revisions to the proposed NGO law.”

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), the former governor who now chairs the Senate subpanel on foreign aid and international development, is in New York for two days of meetings with the United Nations leadership.

Kaine met with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice as well as with other top U.S. and U.N. officials on Tuesday for briefings on the situation in Syria, Iran and North Korea. Kaine is scheduled to attend Wednesday's U.N. Security Council session on countering the Lord's Resistance Army in central Africa and adopting a new mandate for the U.N. force monitoring the troubled buffer zone between Sudan and South Sudan in Abyei.

“My visit to the UN offered an important opportunity to learn more about the U.S. Mission’s recent accomplishments, including support for the strongest sanctions ever against Iran and North Korea and a sustained defense of Israel,” Kaine said in a statement. “As the Assad government continues to slaughter its own people in Syria, it’s critical that we understand the role the UN can play in promoting a negotiated, peaceful and inclusive political transition.”

The State Department is refuting a new federal audit that found U.S. firms improperly paid almost $1 billion in Afghan taxes, calling its conclusions “not supported” and claiming its recommendations “may undercut” bilateral negotiations.

Tuesday's report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) found that Afghanistan over the past five years has levied more than $921 million in business taxes and penalties on 43 U.S. reconstructions contractors, in violation of agreements between the two countries. The report urges the State Department and Congress to take action, if need be by penalizing taxation of U.S. foreign assistance funding to the war-torn country.

“It's disturbing that the Afghan government is targeting American contractors with unjust taxes and intimidation,” Special Inspector General John Sopko said in a statement accompanying the report. “It's even more disturbing that US agencies are letting it happen – all at the expense of American taxpayers, who have already shouldered a heavy burden on Afghan reconstruction. This needs to end.”

Secretary of State John Kerry ripped Congress on Wednesday for preventing President Obama from fulfilling his promise to give the cash-strapped country $1 billion in debt relief.

The Obama administration first made the commitment in 2011 as the country struggled to pay its bills. Kerry gave President Mohammed Morsi the first tranche of that economic aid - $190 million – during his trip to Cairo last month.

“We gave them a promise; and a year later, we've given them zero,” Kerry told House appropriators during a hearing on the president's 2014 budget request. “You don't buy your interests. But if you're not helpful to people in their time of need – if you're not there, part of the process – it's very, very difficult to have the kind of leverage to say [that] a diverse, pluralistic politics is critical to us.”