President Barack Obama will release his 2017 budget request Tuesday, and U.S. aid advocates are eagerly waiting to see how key program areas fare. Already Obama has offered hints — and even some clear indications — of what he will ask Congress to fund in the next fiscal year.
Obama’s State of the Union address last month signaled a few of these key priorities, and the recent “working meeting” with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos in Washington, D.C. attached numbers to the next phase of U.S. assistance to that South American ally.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry has clarified U.S. support for the Syrian crisis at the Syria donors conference in London and U.S. agencies are starting to show their cards in response to the Zika virus outbreak that has grown into a global pandemic emergency.