...ingorant foreign press scum....
Posted on 02/07/2006 5:01:49 PM PST by mylife
US places guns before butter By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Despite his administration's growing concerns about preventing the collapse of states in strategic parts of the world, US President George W Bush has proposed cuts in development and disaster assistance while increasing the defense budget by almost 7%.
Under his 2007 budget request submitted to Congress on Monday, Pentagon spending next year would rise to some US$440 billion, not including another $120 billion that the administration is expected to ask for as a supplemental appropriation to fund US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through September, when fiscal 2006 ends.
By contrast, Bush's proposed 2007 foreign-aid request will remain roughly the same as last year's at some $24 billion, the equivalent of what Washington spends in less than five months in Iraq.
Moreover, the president is calling for a nearly 20% cut in development aid - from roughly $1.5 billion $1.26 billion in development aid - and similar cuts in disaster assistance and child-survival and health programs.
"This administration has said there are three components to national security - diplomacy, defense and development," said Mohammad Akhter, president of InterAction, a coalition of some 160 US non-governmental organizations (NGOs) active in developing countries. "We see that diplomacy and defense are well taken care of, but development is the weakest tool in our kit. Yet that's where our long-term security lies."
While reducing aid in those areas, however, Bush asked for major increases in his two signature aid programs: the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), which was set up to reward "good performers" among poor countries, and his three-year-old PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief ), to combat AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria - most of which is to be spent in 14 selected countries in Africa and the Caribbean as well as Vietnam.
He is asking for a total of $4 billion for the latter, including only $300 million for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria - a multilateral agency especially favored by AIDS activists who oppose US conditions on the aid - and $3 billion for the MCA, an increase of $1.25 billion from the current level.
While Congress has generally approved the administration's AIDS-related requests, however, it has not hesitated to slash requests for the MCA, in large part because the fund has been very slow to qualify eligible countries for the assistance.
"Historical precedent suggests that the Millennium Development Corporation [which administers the MCA] may not come out with the funding requested," noted Stewart Patrick, a research fellow at the Center for Global Development. He also said Congress was likely to increase aid for child survival, as it has in the past.
The defense and foreign-aid requests were contained in a proposed 2007 budget that totals $2.7 trillion, an increase of 2.3% over the current fiscal year. Despite the increase, the federal deficit, if approved, would decline from this year's current estimate of a record $423 billion to $354 billion, according to the administration. However, its deficit forecasts have consistently proven over-optimistic.
With such a large increase in proposed Pentagon (Defense Department) spending, Bush's 2007 budget calls for either holding the line or reducing spending in social and education programs, and even in community policing. In what could prove especially controversial in an election year, he is also calling for cuts in anticipated spending for Medicare, a popular health insurance program for elderly and disabled people.
Bush combined the release of his budget proposal with a new appeal to make permanent tax cuts on corporations and the wealthy that were enacted during his first term. In a Washington Post column published Sunday, Bush's former top economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, warned that tax increases were inevitable unless the budget and the size of the government were reduced.
With the Pentagon budget trajectory still headed upward, however, such a prospect looks increasingly doubtful. On Friday, the Defense Department released its latest Quadrennial Defense Report (QDR), which, while rejecting calls to increase the size of its over-stretched ground forces in the army and Marines, urged major increases in its special operations forces, which are particularly costly to train and equip.
Also as part of its "war on terror", which the Pentagon has renamed "the long war", it is pushing full speed ahead on expensive new weapons systems that can intimidate potential rivals, such as China or Russia.
"Like the QDR, the fiscal 2007 budget reflects the department's continuum of change as we defend our nation, engage in the long war against terrorist extremism and prepare for future potential adversaries," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Monday.
The proposed foreign-aid bill also suggested continuity with the recent past despite Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's recent call for major changes in the ways Washington conducts its business overseas, a process she called "transformational diplomacy".
Apart from Bush's pet anti-AIDS and MCA programs, the new foreign-aid bill calls for a 70% increase in anti-drug spending, to some $1.5 billion worldwide. Much of that will be spent in Afghanistan which, since the ouster of the Taliban in late 2001, has become by far the world's biggest source of opium and heroin. "The drug war comes out a real winner in the budget allocation," Patrick said.
He also expressed disappointment that development and disaster-aid programs, which are designed to promote good governance and help the poorest and most vulnerable sectors in countries that risk becoming "failed states", fared relatively poorly in the budget request compared to the MCA, which is targeted exclusively on countries that perform well in both areas.
"It reaffirms the fears of a lot of folks that the creation of these signature programs, particularly PEPFAR and MCC, will lead to a gradual decrease in some of the other accounts that are critical for righting poverty and advancing development," he added.
The point was echoed by InterAction's Akhter. "It doesn't really make any sense to cut that component because, until you provide development assistance and health, people won't arrive at a point where they can take advantage of the MCA," he said.
State Department officials said some of the declines in the child-survival and health accounts will be made up in the expanded PEFAR program. They also said funding for malaria prevention would increase significantly under the proposed budget.
Aside from changes in the overall spending on development and disaster aid and counter-drug assistance, most of the levels to both specific countries and multilateral programs, including the United Nations and peacekeeping operations, are similar to those approved by Congress for 2006.
Economic aid to Central and Eastern Europe, including parts of the former Soviet Union, would decline. On the other hand, State Department-administered economic assistance for Iraq, previously part of an $18 billion package controlled by the Pentagon, will skyrocket from just $60 million this year to nearly $500 million in 2007. Substantial increases in economic aid are planned for Afghanistan, Sudan and Indonesia.
Some $6.2 billion altogether is earmarked for countries that are considered key strategic allies in the "war on terror".
Military aid and sales overseen by the State Department - nearly $5 billion - would remain roughly the same, with the bulk going to Washington's two biggest economic and military aid recipients, Israel and Egypt.
Patrick said he was surprised the budget did not feature stronger support for democracy promotion and other political and institutional initiatives designed to strengthen states and make them more responsive to its citizens, particularly given the administration's recent rhetoric.
"A main premise of Rice's transformational diplomacy is that the US needs to marshal all of its resources to advance democracy and good governance in weak and failing states," he said. "But it's not clear how this budget request addresses the challenge."
A nearly $100 million Democracy Fund established by Congress last year will be parceled out to other existing programs under Bush's proposal, while mainly nominal increases are planned for Middle East democratization initiatives, the National Endowment for Democracy, and even public diplomacy.
Notice who the butter was supposed to be for?
And the problem with that is? Butter is bad for your arteries. Guns are bad for the other guy's arteries.
Guns make us strong: butter makes us fat.
I find it hard to believe that anyone thinks this administration isn't spreading enough butter around. It's not like Bush has vetoed a single spending bill. Or any other bill for that matter.
"US places guns before butter."
A very wise economic course of action due to our world situation.
America's butter budget is still larger than the economies of fifty countries.
Mmm. Boudin.
So Bono and Bill Gates will supply the world with butter?
Butter kills me, guns kill you. I'll stick with the guns.
And a gun is the first step in making a great steak;)
Seems that Lobe wants us to believe that its bad of us to riegn in foriegn aid.
He also wants you to know that American domestic policies may have to hold the line with no increase.
He's trying to spin this the libs way, but it looks reasonable to me.
I would however like to see funding for out eastern block allies particularly poland romania and estonia
You have a point GWB has been the king of Butter
Hehehe, yeah thats true too.
As far as theory of economics and free trade goes, some states are better at making butter, and some are better at making guns. We make great guns.
No problem here that I can see.
Butter has cholesterol.
Cholesterol is bad.
Butter is bad.
Guns don't have cholesterol.
Guns are good.
You just sign up tonight to get that out?
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