Key senator resists U.S. cuts to foreign aid
BIDI BIDI CAMP, Uganda — Face-to-face with victims of South Sudan’s famine and civil war, the Republican chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee strongly defended U.S. foreign aid on Friday despite President Donald Trump's proposed deep cuts in humanitarian assistance.
Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee visited the world’s fastest-growing refugee crisis in northern Uganda, just across the border from South Sudan, in a pointed response to Trump’s “America First” platform that would slash funds for diplomacy and foreign aid.
Without “U.S. leadership, these people would have no hope,” Corker told the Associated Press in an interview. “I think Americans, if they saw what I see here, and I see in other places, would be glad that our country does what it does.”
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee holds significant sway over the foreign budget, and the proposed cuts almost certainly would need Corker's approval.
The United States is the world’s largest provider of humanitarian assistance and in 2016 gave roughly $2.8 billion US in food aid, but the Trump administration has thrown such funding into doubt.
At the same time, Trump wants to boost military spending.
At the Bidi Bidi refugee settlement, Corker served food to South Sudanese who recently fled fighting in the East African nation, where the United Nations has warned of ethnic cleansing.
A grandmother in a flowing green dress huddled with five of her grandchildren, clutching metal cups of food. The family had walked two weeks to arrive at the refugee camp. Nearby sat a woman with a gaping bullet wound in her ankle.
“The one per cent that we spend on diplomacy and assistance, if we spend it wisely, then the expectations are that the men and women that we love so much in uniform are less likely to get into a hot war or in harm’s way,” Corker said.
Trump’s proposed budget, announced in March, would cut 28 per cent of the budget for foreign aid and diplomacy. The budget plan, which still needs approval by Congress, would put pressure on all nearly all foreign aid, according to U.S. officials.
The budget would “spend less money on people overseas and more money on people back home,” Mick Mulvaney, the president’s budget director, said last month after the plan was announced.