Leahy: Aid to Egypt frozen for now

By Emily Cadei

The Senate appropriator responsible for divvying up foreign aid said Thursday that he intends to freeze aid to Egypt until the current unrest in the country subsides.“The fact of the matter is, there’s not going to be further foreign aid to Egypt until this gets settled,” Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., said in an interview. “Certainly I do not intend to bring it through my committee.” That is the toughest language yet from Leahy, who has previously said only that he would consider withholding the huge sums of aid the United States provides Egypt annually. Leahy told MSNBC on Wednesday that the aid “pipeline would be turned off” if Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak does not step down. But on Thursday, he said that because of the growing chaos since protests first began more than a week ago, a temporary cut-off in funding will occur if the country does not stabilize in the next month. The current government funding law (PL 111-322) is set to expire March 4. The Senate and House are now drafting an appropriations bill to fund the government for the rest of 2011.

In his fiscal 2011 budget request, President Obama asked for more than $1.5 billion in aid to Egypt, $1.3 billion of which is military financing. Leahy lauded the role that Egypt’s military has played so far. He said he has been monitoring the violence that exploded on the streets of Cairo in the past two days and “one of the things I appreciate is the military have held back, and that’s to their credit.” But he still maintained that withholding aid was necessary at the moment. And he warned that if there is evidence that the military is violating human rights using equipment funded by the United States, their assistance “would be cut off immediately,” per a U.S. law that Leahy himself drafted. Leahy declined to say what sort of steps Egypt needed to take before he would reinstate the funding; reiterating only that no Egyptian aid “is going through my committee until this is resolved.” At least one senator warned against such a move. Speaking on the Senate floor, South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham called on his colleagues to “consider the consequences of such an action. Give the Egyptian people a chance to work this out.” The Republican-led House Appropriations Committee on Thursday released budget target numbers for the rest of the fiscal year, including a $47 billion target for the State Department and foreign aid budget. That represents a major cut compared with the president’s overall request of $56.8 billion. Republicans are not expected to decide how that budget will be divided up, including money for Egypt, until early next week. Texas Republican Kay Granger, Leahy’s counterpart on the House Appropriations Committee, is standing by her Monday statement in which she urged caution when discussing Egypt aid. “It is critical that we are deliberate about the actions we take,” she said. The Senate also approved a resolution by unanimous consent on Thursday night that calls on Mubarak to transfer power and help create a caretaker government in advance of Egypt’s presidential elections. Mubarak, who has been in office for the last 30 years, has announced he will not run for re-election but has refused to step down. Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., co-sponsored the resolution. According to Kerry, the final language of the resolution, which was hashed out on the Senate floor after the final votes of the night, does not explicitly ask Mubarak to stand down. He could remain a part of the transition government. “It depends on what they all agree to,” Kerry said. “We want them to make that kind of choice and not narrow the options here,” Kerry added. “But the key here is to respect people’s rights, end the violence.” McCain said on the floor that the resolution was a signal of where the chamber stands on the issue. “We are sending a message from the United States Senate that I’m sure the overwhelming majority of my colleagues will agree with.” This is a “seminal moment in the history of the Middle East and the world,” he said.