Congressional leaders plan to push ahead with foreign assistance reform despite ongoing disputes within the Obama administration over how best to proceed, the Politico’s Laura Rosen writes on her blog.
According to Rozen, a long-brewing spat came to a head Wednesday (April 21) during a meeting of top administration officials involved in drafting two parallel policy reviews - the presidential study directive on global development, spearheaded by the National Security Council, as well as the quadrennial diplomacy and development review, led by the State Department.
Sheila Herrling, the Millenium Challenge Corp.’s new policy chief, “played a key role in the meeting in arguing” that the QDDR “too much subverted USAID’s autonomy,” two sources told Rozen.
“Roughly, the PSD leans to strengthening USAID and its role, and the QDDR leans towards merging State and USAID’s roles,” according to Rozen.
Congressional leaders are miffed about the lack of input they’ve had on the two administration reviews, and plan to pursue reforms even without clear guidance from the White House.
