Kerry to Defend Obama’s Foreign-Affairs Budget
“Kerry to defend Obama’s foreign-affairs budget”
By Josh Rogin Monday,
The Cable, April 26, 2010
After the Senate Budget Committee took a big swipe at next year’s foreign-affairs budget, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will get a chance this week to defend President Obama’s request.
The SFRC will mark up its fiscal 2011 State Department authorization bill in an open meeting Tuesday, the first time the committee has done that since 2005. The Bush administration in its second term didn’t care much about running its foreign affairs policies through Congress and the committee, under then-chairman Joe Biden, didn’t feel the need to spend political capital passing policy laws for an administration it largely opposed.
But this year is different, with new chairman John Kerry and the Obama administration largely in lockstep in calling for increases for the State Department and USAID. The man standing in their way at this moment is another Democrat, Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad, whose committee passed a budget resolution last week that slashed $4 billion from the president’s $58.5 billion request.
Click Here to Read the Full Article
