President Trump’s First Budget Slashes Foreign Aid

Overshadowed by other headlines, President Trump’s first budget request to Congress arrived on Capitol Hill yesterday to relatively little fanfare. With the president overseas, OMB Director Mick Mulvaney was left behind to make the case for the deep cuts the administration is proposing in FY2018. It won’t be easy. For months, members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have dismissed—and even roundly rejected—the spending figures advanced by the new administration, including in the area of foreign aid spending. And they’ve had ample opportunity to do so, starting with the release of the ultra-thin skinny budget in March, followed by leaked documents that added detail to planned reductions. The full budget features a 32 percent cut to topline funding for the Department of State and Foreign Operations, leaving few programs that would completely escape the axe.

While Director Mulvaney has suggested this is a “Taxpayer First Budget,” it’s hard to read this as a good deal for anyone. Value for money is an edict CGD experts have often championed when it comes to foreign aid spending. But deep cuts don’t inherently translate to efficiency. And improving effectiveness will require more than merging budget line items. Meanwhile, some of the moves proposed by the administration would undermine the accountability of foreign aid, threaten hard won gains in global health, put millions of lives at risk, cede US international leadership, and start the process of eliminating an agency that returns money to the Treasury each year while promoting US interests abroad.

Reducing accountability in foreign aid

My colleague Jeremy Konyndyk sounded the alarm last month when plans to merge USAID’s development assistance account into the State-managed Economic Support Fund (ESF) surfaced in a leaked document obtained by Foreign Policy. He outlined specific concerns that the move would result in future assistance being driven primarily by diplomatic and political goals with less accountability—including with respect to congressional oversight. And the documents that comprise the full budget seem to confirm the administration’s intent to target aid in just such a manner through the newly titled Economic Support, Democracy and Development Fund. But despite several nods to efficiency in language describing the move, using aid to pursue near-term foreign policy objectives is rarely efficient. Further, the administration provides only a fraction of the funding, reducing the newly-merged account by 25 percent compared to FY2017 funding levels.

Ignoring the evidence in global health

Even in the face of—oft-remarked—bipartisan support in Congress, US global health funding took a hit in the administration’s budget request. Funding to fight HIV/AIDS globally through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) would bear an 11 percent cut, raising questions about how the administration plans to ensure continued treatment for patients who currently receive antiretroviral drugs through the program.

Under the administration’s budget, USAID’s global health programs would be subject to a far more dramatic cut—just half of what Congress provided in the FY2017 omnibus. Though the budget proposes to redirect some Ebola emergency funds to fight Malaria ($250 million) and support global health security ($72.5 million).

And, worryingly, in making these deep reductions, the administration seems to be ignoring the evidence of what works in global health. For instance, despite interest from key White House staff in advancing women’s economic empowerment—the budget request would eliminate funding for family planning—access to which is so often a necessary precursor to women’s economic empowerment. Budget documents also remark on reductions in funding to combat polio. Polio is an awful disease, but thanks to coordinated efforts from public and private actors alike, the world has come incredibly close to eradicating it entirely. On an annual basis, the US investment in the fight is relatively small, but pulling back makes little sense. Not only would letting up give the disease the chance to regain ground, but if we’re able to reach global eradication we won’t ever need to appropriate money for the disease again. In the CGD book Millions Saved, my colleagues chronicle the incredible cost effectiveness of US efforts to eradicate smallpox, noting that the United States recoups its investments in savings every 26 days because it no longer needs to spend to vaccinate or treat the disease.

Hampering our humanitarian response