Devex: In ‘enlightening’ USAID budget hearing, new chairman calls for careful scrutiny
“In his first U.S. Agency for International Development budget hearing as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator James Risch said Wednesday that U.S. foreign assistance spending must be strategic, aligned with U.S. national interests, and must eliminate duplication and waste. USAID Administrator Mark Green was before the committee to testify about the Trump administration’s fiscal year 2020 budget request, which for the third year in a row proposed a drastic funding cut for foreign assistance programs. Many bipartisan members of Congress have come out strongly against the request … In his opening statement, Risch acknowledged the host of challenges facing the world, among them forcible displacement, hunger, famine, Ebola, and restricted access to polio vaccines…” (Welsh, 5/9).