Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy
Foreign Operations Subcommittee
Hearing With USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios
June 5, 2003
Mr. Natsios, we appreciate you being here.
I have been a strong supporter of USAID. I think you have many very capable, hard working people. That is not to say I am always satisfied with the way funds are spent, but I do think USAID has a lot to be proud of.
I remember the mid-1990s, when some House Republicans were trying to shut down USAID. That did not happen, but today your agency is again under assault from your own Administration and from some Republicans in the House and Senate. Let me cite a few examples:
The President wants to set up another bureaucracy, outside of USAID, to run the Millennium Challenge Account;
The AIDS bill, which the President just signed, takes all your HIV/AIDS money and the power to decide how it is used, and gives it to an independent coordinator; and
The Pentagon – not USAID or the State Department – is in charge of the biggest international relief and reconstruction effort in recent years, in Iraq.
I look forward to hearing your perspective on USAID’s future at a time when the White House seems to see USAID as increasingly irrelevant.
I am also interested to hear your views on nation-building. I can remember the President’s National Security Adviser, Dr. Rice, criticizing the Clinton Administration for nation-building in the former Yugoslavia, by saying "We don't need to have the 82nd Airborne escorting kids to kindergarten."
Today, nation-building has become a central theme of this Administration’s foreign policy. We are engaged in nation-building on a scale unlike anything since the Marshall Plan – from Iraq to Afghanistan to East Timor to the Balkans.
I think we have a strong interest in helping these countries rebuild. But I also think the President’s approach leaves much to be desired.
In Afghanistan, President Bush said we need a Marshall Plan. Yet, the amount of aid the President has requested over the past couple of years pales in comparison. The Congress had to take resources from other important programs to pay for Afghanistan. Even the amount we have appropriated falls short, warlords continue to wield power over large areas of the country, and Afghanistan’s future remains far from secure.
In Iraq, the Administration seems to be making it up from one day to the next. Months after the fall of Saddam Hussein, millions of Iraqis are without adequate water, shelter, employment, or any idea of what lies ahead.
Two months ago we appropriated $2.4 billion for Iraq relief and reconstruction, but it is clear from a report we received from OMB on Monday that there is still no coherent plan or strategy.
I have some other concerns about the President’s Fiscal Year 2004 budget request. The President has received a lot of credit for increasing funds to combat AIDS. I commend him for that. But I doubt many people know that his budget would cut just about everything else we are doing in international health.
It will cut child survival and maternal health programs, aid for vulnerable children, funding for other infectious diseases which kill millions of people – mostly children. It will cut family planning.
Another concern I have is the Development Assistance account. The President’s budget request would cut funding for these core programs – including agriculture, children’s education, democracy building – by $35 million.
These cuts to health and development assistance programs makes no sense, and frankly I think it goes back on his pledge that funding for the Millennium Challenge Account is in addition to – not in place of – funding for existing programs.
Finally, I continue to be very concerned about the ongoing procurement problems at USAID. Just about everything we are trying to do is being hampered by bottlenecks in your procurement office. This was one of the things you were going to fix, but I don’t think you are there yet.
Mr. Chairman, I will stop there. I look forward to the discussion.