When the President spoke last night he categorized most foreign aid under the heading “compassion”. He specifically mentioned 1) Food Aid Reform, 2) HIV and Malaria Control and Prevention, 3) Basic Education Assistance, and 4) the Millenium Challenge Account.
Compassion was also mentioned briefly as a side note to “Keeping America Safe by Fostering the Freedom Agenda”. (One interesting thing, when you go to that link, notice that the URL still refers to the “Freedom Agenda” as the “Global War on Terror”, or “GWOT”).
I’m most interested that the President is still pushing for his food aid reform. This is a rational policy that I hope he is able to get through Congress this time. All the President wants to do is use some of the Food Aid budget to buy food from farmers who are close to the beneficiaries.
The way we do it now is to buy from US farmers and ship the food around the world using US shipping companies. It costs as much as 2-3 times more to do it this way and depresses local food prices (sometimes that might be a good thing, but falling prices discourage local farmers to grow food.)
Before when the administration tried to change to a mixed approach they were blocked by lobbying forces in the food and shipping industries. The Center for Global Development posted on this issue when it came up in 2005.