U.S. President Barack Obama has asked Congress for $4 trillion in fiscal year 2016. Just over 1 percent of that hefty sum would go to international affairs and development programs. But buried further within that small slice are a number of new stories and signals about what the president has planned when it comes to “smart power” in the waning years of his administration.
Obama’s budget request to the 113th Congress argues that funding to Central America should be doubled and refugee assistance cut. It also moves toward phasing out funding for Overseas Contingency Operations — an account that has been synonymous with the “global war on terror” — over the next four years.
If the president’s request were to come to fruition, an outcome that seems unlikely in the face of a Republican-dominated Congress, overall funding for international affairs would increase by roughly $1.4 billion — or 2.4 percent — in the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, 2015. That increase jumps to almost 8 percent if 2015 emergency funding for Ebola is taken out of the picture.