Making foreign operations efficient, fiscally sensible

Expectations for significant foreign policy changes by an incoming administration are running high during this campaign season. Pundits, politicians, and policy wonks all have ideas on what direction these shifts ought to take, and will offer recommendations whether solicited or not. U.S. foreign policy options may be pulled in many directions within this debate, but the post-election reality may prove otherwise.

Both campaigns have attracted competent foreign affairs experts. However, while policy differences between the candidates are magnified on the stump, the reality in Washington is that absent reaction to unanticipated events the pace and scope of major foreign policy changes will largely be determined by budgetary processes and bureaucratic inertia.

Time does not favor the new administration.  Already, the gears of government at the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) are grinding down in anticipation of new leadership. On Capitol Hill, gridlock ensures that only the bare minimum will be accomplished before a new president is sworn in. There is no better evidence of this than the difficult birth of the pending emergency supplemental bill.

Abroad, America’s friends await the outcome of the November election — and the first indications of presidential priorities. Not surprisingly, there will be no U.S.-brokered peace between Israelis and Palestinians in the waning days of this administration. And a surge in violence in Iraq and Afghanistan is a real possibility as our enemies attempt to influence politics at home.

In addition to priming the foreign policy institutional pump, the president will need to navigate a dysfunctional budget process and revitalize an increasingly irrelevant Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Out with the old, and in with the… old, the president inherits the fiscal 2010 State Department and foreign operations budget request that will reflect the priorities of his predecessor, and it will not be until the fiscal 2011 request that new priorities and policies are clearly delineated in legislation.

An emergency supplemental bill for ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in February or March 2009 affords the administration an early opportunity to engage a new Congress on foreign affairs. Instead of relying on the emergency spending mischaracterization currently employed by OMB, the president should regularize the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in annual appropriations bills. The American people deserve transparency in spending.

The president will find his hands tied on foreign aid. Congressional support for international affairs spending is waning, and for the past several years Congress has failed to fully fund the president’s request for this function.

Major new initiatives of the current administration (notably the president’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and the Millennium Challenge Corporation, or MCC) are open-ended funding requirements that receive billions of dollars each fiscal year. Top-dollar country recipients (including Israel, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Sudan, and Colombia) will also continue to require substantial taxpayer assistance. And given the unpredictability of natural disasters and pandemics, America is permanently on call as a first responder to global crises. Over his term, the president may repeatedly ask Congress to cram a size-11 foreign aid foot into a size-9 appropriations shoe.

It may be easy for the candidates to talk of discretionary spending freezes on the campaign trail, but this will translate into a post-election loss of foreign policy flexibility. For example, additional security assistance for Lebanon to help mitigate the influence of Syria and Iran (which does not rise to an unanticipated emergency) will need to be offset from within foreign aid accounts. The president can make these difficult offset decisions, or Congress will, as we have in the past. This difficult situation is made worse by the penchant of the current majority in Congress to condition security and other assistance for America’s allies, and the dollar’s continued drop in value.

In short, the incoming administration will be expected to do more abroad with fewer resources and less flexibility. The president’s foreign policy team would be wise to engage Congress early on the reprioritization of foreign aid, and to articulate a commonsense approach to budgeting and foreign policy. Long-term problems require long-term solutions, and such an approach should include continuation of reform efforts to ensure that aid programs support policy.

 To ensure buy-in by foreign government for U.S.-funded activities and to help mitigate opportunities for corruption, the incoming administration should extend to the maximum amount possible the matching requirements mandated by Section 110 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 to foreign government recipients of economic and military aid, and MCC funding.

Finally, to address the personnel shortages at the State Department and USAID critical to policy development and program execution, the administration should establish a transition program for retiring military officers with untraditional diplomacy and development experience in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere

For its part, Capitol Hill should return to regular order in which budgets, authorizing, and appropriations bills are considered and approved in sequence by the end of each fiscal year.

Only a commonsense approach to foreign operations by a new administration and a return to regular order by Congress will ensure that future policy changes occur in an expeditious and fiscally responsible manner.

Gregg is ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee and the Senate Appropriations panel’s Subcommittee on State/Foreign Operations.