It's Time for Foreign Aid Reform

When Congress reconvenes after Labor Day, they will find an increasingly vocal and diverse, bipartisan movement pushing to make the non-military U.S. foreign assistance system more efficient and effective. Of our aid dollars today, less than half of one percent is given to poverty-focused development assistance. A more modern foreign aid system will strengthen our efforts to alleviate poverty and hunger, fight disease, and create economic growth for struggling people in developing countries.

The movement cannot be ignored. Supporters from the Obama administration, members of Congress, pastors, and concerned citizens have come together with a simple message: given the big foreign policy and economic challenges we face, we cannot afford piecemeal or patchwork changes. Neither can the world's most vulnerable people. We need fundamental and comprehensive reform now.

The problems that have to be addressed are well documented. Our current foreign assistance system is a fragmented, duplicitous, and non-transparent network of programs. It is overseen by 12 departments, 25 different agencies, and nearly 60 government offices.

The U.S. foreign assistance system traces its roots to the Marshall Plan, a U.S. support program that helped rebuild Europe from the devastation of World War II. Despite the success of the plan, public support had dwindled by the late 1950s. To remedy the situation, President John F. Kennedy pushed for the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. The law decoupled civilian and military assistance, attempted to depoliticize development, and created, among other things, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

His rationale for the law has haunting similarities to the situation we now confront: "...the existing program [is] bureaucratically fragmented, awkward and slow, its administration...diffused over a haphazard and irrational structure covering at least four departments and several other agencies. Its weaknesses have begun to undermine confidence in our effort both here and abroad."

Over the next half-century, Kennedy's strategic and moral vision for long-range economic and social development promotion lived on in landmark programs like the USAID-led Green Revolution in agriculture. This helped deliver millions of people from poverty and set nations like India on paths towards prosperity. But Kennedy's call for a more effective foreign assistance system was lost.

Fast forward to the last decade, when an unprecedented bipartisan coalition came together to push new foreign assistance initiatives like debt relief, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the President's Malaria Initiative (PMI), and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). These programs have saved millions of lives in the developing world, and they have helped support a march towards self-sufficiency by many poor countries.

Despite all good intentions, layering the new programs over the existing foreign assistance structure, while also instituting the much criticized "F Process" which crippled USAID, led to more fragmentation than consolidation. The result is a foreign assistance system that is not getting us as much bang for our buck, and keeping us from being the responsible partner for people in developing countries we support.

The Obama administration has now made ambitious pledges to increase foreign assistance and modernize the system. This is largely because of an unprecedented consensus around the need to make development a pillar of U.S. foreign policy amid the complex and interconnected challenges we face.

The early signs for foreign aid reform give reason for optimism:

• Secretary Clinton is moving forward with the first-ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, a blueprint for our diplomatic and development efforts. She also secured strong funding for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in the 2010 budget and has taken the lead in forging the administration's new world hunger initiative;
• One hundred bipartisan members of the House are supporting Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Howard Berman's Initiating Foreign Assistance Reform Act of 2009 (H.R. 2139). A related bill was launched by Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry, ranking minority member Richard Lugar, and four other bipartisan committee members. Both bills would bring greater efficiency, coordination, and transparency to U.S. foreign assistance;
• President Obama promised an empowered, streamlined, 21st-century development agency during the campaign. We are, however, still waiting for a nominee to head USAID. There are indications that the White House may issue a presidential study directive to make sure overall U.S. development policy -- whether related to trade, agriculture, climate change or finance -- is more strategic and coordinated; and,
• Both Kerry and Berman appear ready to soon revisit badly outdated Foreign Assistance Act. In fact, Berman has already invited comments on a draft outline for what a new bill could look like.

With leadership from President Obama and coordination between these various actors, I am confident that foreign assistance reform will move forward and finish the task President Kennedy set out nearly 50 years ago.

Although it isn't clear yet whether the administration and Congress will choose fundamental reform over the patchwork approach, one thing is irrefutable: we can't afford for our leaders to hurry up and wait when so much is at stake.

Reverend Beckmann is president of Bread for the World and co-chair of the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN), a coalition advocating for a comprehensive overhaul of the U.S. foreign assistance system.