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Trump's proposed budget would cut $2.2 billion from global health spending
National Public Radio's Goats and Soda ^ | May 25, 2017 | Nurith Aizenman

Posted on 05/25/2017 1:38:50 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

U.S. aid for international family planning would be eliminated.

Programs to combat HIV/AIDS in the world's poorest countries would be slashed by 17 percent.

Efforts to fight malaria would be chopped by 11 percent.

Those are just some of the cuts to global health spending called for by President Trump in the proposed budget he unveiled this week.

On one level the reductions did not come as a surprise. Trump had already made clear in his "skinny budget" proposal, released in March, that he wanted to lower spending on foreign assistance by more than a third.

Yet advocates for global health programs say they are nonetheless reeling as they pore through this week's more detailed release.

"This is an official act of the executive branch. It's not a press release," says Scott Morris, director of the U.S. Development Policy Initiative at the Center for Global Development, a Washington D.C. think tank.

He adds that the shock is all the greater in light of longstanding bipartisan support for global health spending. Overall, Trump would cut the annual global health budget by about 26 percent, or around $2.2 billion in the 2018 fiscal year that begins October 1, decreasing it from about $8.7 billion in the current fiscal year budget to less than $6.5 billion.

The program that would be hit hardest would be family planning. The U.S. currently spends $607.5 million per year to provide women in poor countries with birth control and reproductive healthcare. Trump appears to want to zero that out entirely. His budget proposal explicitly calls for eliminating the largest source of this funding: $524 million disbursed by USAID, stating that the cut "achieves further savings" to the budget.

Earlier this year Trump also announced he was withholding $32.5 million in funding earmarked for the U.N. Population Fund, the lead United Nations agency on family planning and maternal health. Trump made that decision on the grounds that the agency helps to support a Chinese government family planning program that forces people to get abortions and sterilizations — a determination that both the agency and many advocates for foreign aid vigorously dispute.

The U.S. government has also been providing an additional $51 million for international family planning grants through a separate account at USAID. Trump's proposed budget is silent on this front, but in light of his other decisions, it seems doubtful the administration would spend that money either, says Jennifer Kates, vice president and director of Global Health & HIV Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The impact on women and children worldwide would be severe, contends the abortion rights advocacy group PAI. In an analysis released this week based on research data compiled by the Guttmacher Institute, PAI calculates that the reduction in family planning services that would result from ending U.S. funding would lead to 3.3 million more abortions, 15,000 more maternal deaths, 8 million more unintended pregnancies, and 26 million fewer women and couples receiving services per year.

Kates thinks it's "unlikely" Congress will go along with a wholesale elimination of international family planning funding. Still, she notes that in contrast to other areas of global health spending, "family planning is one of the more contested areas. So even though over the last several years Congress has ultimately provided family planning funding at the current level, it's unclear if that will happen this year."

Analysts are more confident that Congress will ignore Trump's wishes when it comes to the proposed cuts to spending on HIV/AIDS and malaria, which are widely seen as signature Republican initiatives. Trump would reduce funding for anti-malaria efforts 11 percent from $755 million to $674 million. And he wants to lower annual contributions to PEPFAR — the program that funds both life-saving drugs for infected people as well as prevention efforts — by 17 percent from $4.6 billion in the current budget to $3.8 billion.

In the documentation released with the budget, the administration said it was making such cuts "with the expectation that other donors can and should increase their commitments to these causes."

But George W. Bush, who launched PEPFAR, has been making the case that full funding is in the national interest of Americans. In an op-ed in The Washington Post last month Bush noted that PEPFAR has helped saved 12 million lives and wrote that "societies mired in disease breed hopelessness and despair, leaving people ripe for recruitment by extremists. When we confront suffering — when we save lives — we breathe hope into devastated populations, strengthen and stabilize society, and make our country and the world safer."

In addition to the outright cuts, advocates are also somewhat concerned that 38 percent of the funding that Trump's budget does provide for anti-malaria efforts comes from re-allocating unspent monies from a supplemental bill to fund Ebola fighting efforts back in 2015. That same source is also used to fund all $72.5 million that Trump has proposed toward global health security programs, which are charged with identifying and protecting the U.S. from disease threats around the world.

"It's money that is unspent, so it's good to use it," says Kates. But she adds that it could signal a lack of commitment to appropriating the funding directly in future budgets: "What happens next year is unclear. It creates uncertainty about the stability about these programs."

More broadly advocates worry that by putting such an unprecedented cut on the table Trump will at least chip away at the longstanding bipartisan consensus that global health aid should be funded at current levels.

"I have no doubt Congress will succeed in restoring some level of funding," says Morris. "But it strikes me as an insurmountable lift to get back to the level of funding these programs currently enjoy."


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: aid; charity; trump; waste
Why is ANY of our tax money going to this?
1 posted on 05/25/2017 1:38:51 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

GOOD! Make the Cuts. WE got other fish to fry with 2.2 Billion Dollars.


2 posted on 05/25/2017 1:42:17 PM PDT by EnglishOnly (Fight all out to win OR get out now.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

We are the biggest suckers on the face of the planet. We double dip!

Our citizens give massive amounts of money to the third world. They choose to. Good for them.

Our government should not be confiscating any money to donate on our behalf. NOTHING!

I would also add, donate here at home first. Donate in your local community. Give the bulk here. If you wish to donate overseas too, good for you.


3 posted on 05/25/2017 1:44:56 PM PDT by DoughtyOne (Happy days are here again!)
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To: EnglishOnly

All part of the transfer of wealth from us to them. We go down the tubes they live on our money.
I could think of many more ways to cut spending. The problem with the American people is they have no clue what their government is doing to destroy this country.
ON PURPOSE I MIGHT ADD!


4 posted on 05/25/2017 1:46:24 PM PDT by Tac Double Tap (I'd rather die standing than on my knees begging.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Efforts to fight malaria would be chopped by 11 percent.

Appropriate, as long as we are not inclined to be building facilities to produce DDT.

5 posted on 05/25/2017 1:47:50 PM PDT by C210N
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Efforts to fight malaria would be chopped by 11 percent.

Appropriate, as long as we are not inclined to be building facilities to produce DDT.

6 posted on 05/25/2017 1:47:50 PM PDT by C210N
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To: C210N

Good. Let the intl ingrates pay their own way.


7 posted on 05/25/2017 1:56:07 PM PDT by hal ogen (First Amendment or Reeducation camp?)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

If the money goes to an organization like the UN, it is probably likely that 50% goes to the cause and 50% to “administer” the program, ie making a lot of bureaucrats rich.


8 posted on 05/25/2017 2:01:20 PM PDT by antidemoncrat
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

I’m sure NPR will never report on the trillions of dollars of unfunded future liabilities. The US is looking at a massive debt problem and it won’t be pretty if nothing is done to curtail government spending.


9 posted on 05/25/2017 2:04:42 PM PDT by Pining_4_TX (For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. ~ Hosea 8:7)
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To: Pining_4_TX

Instead of giving money to corrupt democrats who want t ruin the country, Hollywood should be giving that money to charity.


10 posted on 05/25/2017 2:29:43 PM PDT by EQAndyBuzz ("“In America, we don’t worship government, we worship God.”" DJT)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Good - make those other countries do what it takes to tend to their own people - if they won’t, their people should overthrow them....worked for us.


11 posted on 05/25/2017 2:37:31 PM PDT by trebb (Where in the the hell has my country gone?)
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To: GOPJ; ExTexasRedhead; Jane Long; MinuteGal; jsanders2001; V K Lee; HarleyLady27; ...
Please, Pres Trump, STOP the 100 million tax dollars Obama confiscated for phony do-goodism in Muslim Morocco.....

Before he exited, Obama's Clintonesque Get-Rich-Quick Foundation got ahold of 100 million tax dollars ..... to be hold by his (gag) foundation and doled out "to teach Muslim girls in Morocco."

LOOK AT THAT SMILE Michele, her daughters and her mother in
Morocco's palace. 100 million dollars to spend as she pleases......no accountability required.

==================================================

FReepers DO THIS: Call President Trump.
PHONE NUMBERS: Comments: 202-456-1111 Switchboard: 202-456-1414

TALKING POINTS

<><> No tax dollars to teach Muslim girls in Morocco.

<><> Stop this and Obama's other ridiculous confiscations.

<><> Stop Obama's confiscating 160,000 tax dollars annually (a pension for his MIL---for baby-sitting).

<><> How many baby-sitters do you know /w/ a 160,000 dollar annual govt pension?

Let's teach American girls how corrupt the Obama administration was.

12 posted on 05/25/2017 2:44:46 PM PDT by Liz ( Liberalism is standing on your head and telling the rest of the world that it's upside down.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
"global health spending"

Trump is president of the United States, not of the world.
13 posted on 05/25/2017 2:52:43 PM PDT by Steve_Seattle
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Our tax money should NOT be sent overseas except during a war.


14 posted on 05/25/2017 3:07:48 PM PDT by clee1 (We use 43 muscles to frown, 17 to smile, and 2 to pull a trigger. I'm lazy and I'm tired of smiling.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

NTOWY.

L


15 posted on 05/25/2017 3:16:10 PM PDT by Lurker (America burned the witch.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Stop all of it now


16 posted on 05/25/2017 3:28:52 PM PDT by ronnie raygun (Trump plays chess the rest are still playing checkers)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

17 posted on 05/26/2017 5:50:08 AM PDT by GailA (Ret. SCPO wife: suck it up buttercups it's President Donald Trump!)
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To: clee1

True. Also, Trump was right to demand NATO members pay up. We owe 20 trillion and keep giving money to countries and governments who not only hate us-they use us.


18 posted on 05/26/2017 7:35:45 AM PDT by Lumper20
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To: hal ogen

AID was a ripoff of our tax dollars back in Vietnam.


19 posted on 05/26/2017 7:37:18 AM PDT by Lumper20
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Tell the rest of the globe that the money’s got to come from them. We’ll share expertise where needed, but the cash stops NOW!


20 posted on 05/26/2017 10:26:19 AM PDT by JimRed ( TERM LIMITS, NOW! Building the Wall! TRUTH is the new HATE SPEECH.)
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