Fissues within the Democratic party will come to the fore Tuesday (April 28) as the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee takes up State Department fiscal 2011 appropriations.
The panel, led by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) is expected to defy a non-binding resolution passed last week by the Budget Committee that slashed USD4 billion from President Barack Obama’s USD58.5 billion request.
“That flew in the face of letters from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and the entire development community,” Josh Rogin writes on the Foreign Policy magazine’s The Cable blog.
Kerry will insist on a DOS funding increase, a congressional aide tells Rogin, but tweak draft language to allow more flexibility in Millennium Challenge Corp. funding and turn the Office of Global Women’s Issues into a permanent DOS branch, among other things.
The budget panel is led by North Dakota Democrat Kent Conrad.