Background Briefing on the 2012 Budget Request

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Background Briefing on the 2012 Budget Request


Special Briefing
Three Senior Department Officials

Washington, DC

February 14, 2011




MR. CROWLEY: We’ll do this portion on background as three senior State Department officials. But for your purposes, [Senior State Department Official]
QUESTION: P.J., do we need – I mean, I don’t think that – just on this, I mean, you have to be able to defend your budget in public. So I don’t have an objection if they’re on background, but is anything they say, can we just attribute it to the State Department?
MR. CROWLEY: Sure. All right. Do I – well, put it this way. I’ve got –
QUESTION: This is a public budget.
MR. CROWLEY: I’ve got – fine, fine, fine, fine. I’ve got two State Department – senior State Department officials, one USAID official. But just so you – [Senior State Department Official] works the State operations portion of the budget. [Senior State Department Official] works the foreign assistance portion of the budget. [Senior State Department Official] works the USAID portion of the budget. So we – they have to be on the Hill in about an hour, so we’ve got 30 minutes, give or take, to go through any specific programmatic questions that you have.
MR. CROWLEY: Peter. Russia.
QUESTION: Well, wait.
MR. CROWLEY: All right.
QUESTION: Can I get my first question?
MR. CROWLEY: You may.
QUESTION: I need to know what the real budget is for foreign operations because, I mean, the entire Function 150 –
MR. CROWLEY: Tell you what. [Senior State Department Official], why don’t you –
QUESTION: -- my news organization use as the State Department international operations budget.
MR. CROWLEY: Right.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: So the Function 150 through (inaudible).
QUESTION: Yeah.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: $50.9 billion. And that would include the Treasury international programs along with the Millennium Challenge Corporation, Peace Corps. And that’s a 3.3 percent increase over FY 2010.
QUESTION: So what does that make the total, then?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: That is the total.
QUESTION: No, no, no. When you combine State ops and – well, how is that less than 50 whatever it was – 55.7?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: Forty-seven billion dollars is our request for foreign enduring programs. That is for just the State/USAID components. If you look at the whole Function 150 –
QUESTION: Yes.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: -- the request is $50.9 billion.
QUESTION: Plus the 8.7 OCO. Correct?
MR. CROWLEY: That adds Agriculture, Treasury –
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Treasury, MCC, Peace Corps, Broadcasting Board of Governors. There’s a whole set of agencies that is considered –
QUESTION: I understand, but so you take the 50.9 and add the 8.7?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: If you were going to add the OCO component of it, OCO is appearing in a separate chapter, along with the Department of Defense –
QUESTION: Understood.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: -- not as part of State, USAID –
QUESTION: Understood.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: -- Function 150.
QUESTION: Okay.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: So it would not be part of the Function 150.
MR. CROWLEY: There was a question about democracy for –
QUESTION: For Russia.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Right, so we – the budget in 2012 protects democracy programs in Russia. The total budget for Russia right now is – in the 2012 budget is almost 65 billion -- $65 million.
QUESTION: Say it again, please. Say it again, please.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: I said the total budget for Russia in our 2012 request is about $65 million.
QUESTION: Could you give us the figure for all democracy programs?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: We don’t have a precise figure for democracy programs. What we’re saying is that democracy programs and economic growth, which we do have an estimate for, is about 4 billion.
QUESTION: Is there a decrease or increase in budgeting?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: The Russia budget decreases slightly, by $7 million. But that reflects the general tradeoffs that we had to make in a very tight budget.
QUESTION: Thank you very much.
QUESTION: But none of that came out of the (inaudible) democracy?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: No.
QUESTION: What did it come out of?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: It came out of general other programs which, when you see the backup information we’ll provide in the next – today and in the next few weeks, you’ll – that’ll be laid out.
QUESTION: Could we get the figures for Plan Colombia, for the Merida Initiative, and for the Central America initiative on security? And what is the variation, if you have --
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Okay, that’s a lot of numbers but – so the Mexico total assistance program in 2012 is $334 million.
QUESTION: I’m sorry, that’s Merida plus other --
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: That’s just Mexico.
QUESTION: Just Merida, though?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Right. The Merida piece of the 335 million is $282 million. There is a bilateral program in Mexico that is technically outside of the Merida Initiative. The Merida number comes down from 2010, largely because it is a – it’s a transformation of the program from more hardware and equipment to more capacity building with the government rule of law program. So they’re inherently less expensive.
On Colombia, I have – oh, Colombia is $400 million. And someone asked about Central America, and CARSI is – I have to – I may have to get back to you on that one. I don’t think I have that at my fingertips right now.
QUESTION: Would you please say whether that’s more or less?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: CARSI is about the same as it was in – one last year.
QUESTION: And Colombia?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Colombia is less. Colombia is less because the – again, we’re transforming that program away from U.S. responsibility more to the Government in Colombia. This has been a glide path we’ve been on for a couple of years. Both tight budgets and sort of programmatic need allows us to move money from Colombia to other places.
QUESTION: How much less –
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: And –
QUESTION: (Inaudible) specific program –
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: CARSI is a hundred.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: CARSI, I’m sorry – CARSI’s 100 million; the Colombia decrease is 107 million.
MR. CROWLEY: Andy, Josh, then Nicole.
QUESTION: Well, as I – probably a repeat of Josh’s question earlier, could you run us through which countries have been –
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Sure.
QUESTION: -- sort of de-listed, if you will? And then also, could you unpack that – the Pakistan portion, Kerry-Lugar-Berman, and where does that fit in?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Sure. Sure.
QUESTION: If you can really break down what Pakistan is getting (inaudible).
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Okay. Let me just get my list here. Just the programs in FMF and IMET that were zeroed out, again were – they are very, very small programs. This was done both – we’re trying to move toward – our budget towards less very, very small programs, because we’re going to have to – we’re going to have less money down the road to allocate, and we want to make sure we allocate it to the highest priorities. So these – the savings that these cuts generate are very, very small, but you have to start somewhere. So FMF, the five countries are Chile, Haiti, Malta, East Timor, and Tonga.
QUESTION: (Inaudible.)
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Sure. Chile, Haiti, Malta, East Timor, and Tonga. And the IMET nine countries are Equatorial Guinea, Iceland, Kuwait, Madagascar, Qatar –
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: Slow down a bit.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICAL TWO: Sorry. Iceland, Kuwait, Madagascar, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and the UAE. And again, the justification material will lay out in more detail each of these, but just the general frame is we had to make tradeoffs in the budget and this is part of the mix that we made tradeoffs on.
QUESTION: Hold on. On Iceland --
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Mm-hmm.
QUESTION: Iceland doesn’t have enough military, which made it unique in NATO. How were they ever getting IMET funding in the first place?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: We were probably sending somebody from the Iceland Government to a U.S. military school here in the U.S., and that’s –
QUESTION: Okay. And then, could you just – can you give us totals on what the savings are for –
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Again, they are very –
QUESTION: Not for individual –
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Right, right, the total savings. They’re very, very – they’re very small in relative terms. Let me just find my notes here.
QUESTION: (Inaudible) some of those complete cancellations.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: They are zeroes in the – these are the bilateral programs are zeroes in the 2012 column of the budget. I had this written down somewhere. The IMET countries are – it’s under $1 million, and the FMF countries are about $5 million.
QUESTION: (Inaudible.)
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: The IMET countries are under $1 million and the FMF countries are about $5 million.
QUESTION: Okay.
MR. CROWLEY: Josh.
QUESTION: Thanks. Here on your fact sheet, it says you’d eliminate bilateral assistance to six countries –
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Right.
QUESTION: -- and cut more than half of development assistance to 20 countries.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Right.
QUESTION: That’s separate from FMF and IMET, right?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Some of that’s overlapped. The developing countries are a totally separate list.
QUESTION: All right. Can you give us the list? Also it’s – the main question is: How did you come to choose these countries as opposed to any other ones?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: So when we do the budget, we have the entire portfolio to look at and we work collaboratively with USAID and the regional bureaus and the functional bureaus here at State, along with our missions. And as you know, countries receive various funding from various different pots. And so what you’re seeing is these particular programs that were just determined by the policy process we had in the building to be of lower priority. It doesn’t mean these countries are being zeroed out on the development side. It just means that a country might have been getting more initiative funding and so we had to take away the bilateral funding, only because of tradeoffs.
We have a – there’s a long list of countries. I don’t know if I should read off the whole list now, but you can see in the justification material –
QUESTION: Well, at least the six that you said are being zeroed out.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: So the six that are being zeroed out, some of which are the same countries in the FMF and IMET area, but – so we zeroed out the bilateral program in North Korea, Tonga.
QUESTION: How big was that? Zero?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Three million.
QUESTION: Oh.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: This was three million --
QUESTION: Support funds?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Yeah.
QUESTION: What?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Yeah.
QUESTION: Well, this is – what was it going for?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: It was going to support democracy, civil society kinds of movements outside of the country. What we’ve done in the North Korea program – it’s not necessarily zeroing out the program, per say, but we’re now allowing the program in North Korea to be funded out of central funds, if in fact there are programs there to fund. So the bilateral – the dedicated number for North Korea is going down, but the Department always has the flexibility to use.
MR. CROWLEY: Just to be absolutely clear, that $3 million was not going to --
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: No, not to the government. Right. These are going to NGOs and other places, not going to the government, obviously. But --
QUESTION: Right.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: But this does not mean that we will not be spending any money for these kinds of programs in North Korea. It just means that we are now making the – we are allowing the flexibility for our central programs, the democracy bureau here to take its funding and, if it chooses, to spend it there. So --
QUESTION: Just out of curiosity, was there any – on this North Korea program, did you see – ever see any evidence that it had any effect?
MR. CROWLEY: It’s a work in progress.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: It’s a work in progress; that’s right.
QUESTION: Forever.
QUESTION: So North Korea, Tonga --
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: North Korea, Tonga, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and UAE, which are the IMET programs I talked about earlier.
QUESTION: And how much is total savings?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: So the total savings for those six are 4.5 million.
QUESTION: And could we have a basic comment on choosing – your choosing all of these Middle East, Gulf Coast --
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Right. So --
QUESTION: Gulf country militaries. It seems like we want to work with those guys now.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Right, so we were giving these Gulf states small amounts of IMET money so they could take advantage of IMET discounts in U.S. schools. We are now asking that – and there was a requirement that we have to adhere to – where only – you can only receive the discount if you were a recipient of U.S. aid. So we’re now asking that that provision be dropped. We don’t – we no longer have to give our bilateral assistance to help them get the discount, because they should be able to get the discount on their own.
QUESTION: So they can still participate in IMET?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Yes.
QUESTION: But they have to pay for it themselves?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Yes.
QUESTION: And the total savings was?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Four and a half million.
QUESTION: Thank you.
MR. CROWLEY: Nicole.
QUESTION: I just wanted to follow up on the 15 percent cuts that you mentioned to Europe and Central Asia, just a little more detail on --
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Sure. So what we’ve done in the Europe account, again, as part of our hard tradeoffs, is we have – there are countries in Europe, particularly in the Balkans, who are close to or on their way to acceding to sort of these Euro-Atlantic institutions, NATO and the EU. We are, obviously, not defunding them, but we had to cut back. And so we’re cutting back on those places where we think are able to sort of be on their own, who are going to move into more international institutions, and focusing on the countries in Europe that need more help. And so the Europe account, as you – has been sort of steadily going down for years.
This is just another step toward the glide path, where it’s actually a success story, where Europe, Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and other places are – they’re growing economically. They’ve – this has been a huge success story since the FSA/SEED Act was passed back in the 1990s. We still have a fairly robust amount of money going to Europe and Eurasia. It’s about $744 million. That’s still fairly substantial, but it’s less than what it was in 2010.
QUESTION: Could you give us some names?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Yeah. So countries like Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Cyprus, Poland are all countries that we think we just can’t afford to give this level of assistance that we’ve had in the past.
QUESTION: Yes, two questions: Could you give me some examples of the possible flexibility on North Korea spending? And second, is there any North Korea-specific reason for North Korea not getting any money?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Well, like I said earlier, we have a bureau in the State Department, the Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Bureau, who runs central democracy programs. They don’t – we don’t allocate those programs in advance. We allocate them in the year we get the money. They are – they have the flexibility to program that where they think it’s needed most, and that’s where we think the decisions on North Korea need to be.
QUESTION: And North Korea specific reason, do you --
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Again, it’s – we can’t fund everything everywhere any longer. And in a flat budget, we had priorities to fund and we have – we had cuts to make. And you’re just seeing our choices, they’re reflected.
QUESTION: On that North Korea thing, but not specifically on North Korea, but that was part – that was counted as ESF?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Mm-hmm.
QUESTION: And that North Korea thing was 3 million itself? And the total, if I understand correctly from your answer to Josh, the total was 4.5 million?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: For the six countries.
QUESTION: Exactly. So North Korea was getting the lion’s share of that, or not North Korea but --
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Right.
QUESTION: Why was this – I guess I’m not sure why it was counted as – isn’t ESF generally money given directly to governments?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: No.
QUESTION: No?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: ESF is money that’s given to countries of high – of places that are of strategic importance, that are of high priority, that have high policy importance. It does not mean money goes to the government.
QUESTION: Okay.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: In many cases, it goes to NGOs and other places.
QUESTION: Okay, is that the case, what it was in the Gulf States? Because I mean these countries are not poor.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Right. The Gulf states were receiving money to help them secure a discount on their – sending their military officials to our schools.
QUESTION: Oh.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: So --
QUESTION: Well, now I’m confused. I mean, this is different than the IMET?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: In some cases, there’s an overlap. So the six countries we’ve zeroed out bilaterally are some of the same countries that we took the IMET away. There is an overlap in those countries.
QUESTION: Okay. I’m horribly confused.
QUESTION: (Inaudible) the programs for promoting democracy in Cuba, is there any funding for that?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Yes, we have 20 million in the budget for Cuba, same as last year.
QUESTION: Was the case of this gentleman, Alan Gross arrested has had any impact on the budgeting or --
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: I’ll leave it to P.J. to talk about that, but we – this money, again, is not going to the Government of Cuba. It’s going to groups to help --
QUESTION: Yeah, but after this arrest, I guess you had --
MR. CROWLEY: I mean, we fund these programs to serve our national interests and our objectives. It’s – withholding is not to punish. Actually, we invested in these programs in order to try to enact change within Cuba.
QUESTION: Will you be signing or contracting still people sending them to the island or contracting companies that are sending –
MR. CROWLEY: How we execute that program is a separate calculation.
Lalit.
QUESTION: How much of the total budget for developing of democracy, promotion of democracy overseas?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: I’m sorry. I didn’t --
QUESTION: How much is the total budget for promotional democracy or democratic activities overseas, other countries?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: That’s what I was saying. We have a number – a combination of sort of economic growth and democracy programs, which is about $4 billion.
QUESTION: Four billion. And can you give us a sense on the Pakistan figures?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Sure. So in Pakistan – thank you. So again, we have our Pakistan program broken up into two parts of the budget, the enduring core part of the budget and the OCO part of the budget. So total Pakistan spending in the enduring part of the budget is $1.9 billion, and that includes obviously the cost of our operations and our diplomatic presence there and about 1.9 billion is in foreign assistance. And of the 1.9 billion, 1.5 billion I guess is what you – what we all refer to as Kerry-Lugar-Berman. And we have 350 million in that part of the budget for FMF programs, which is part of the five-year MOU or five-year agreement that we’ve made with the government of Pakistan. And then there’s some USAID operating expenses in that number as well.
On the OCO budget, on the extraordinary budget, we have $1.2 billion. Again, there’s some money for the operational platform, about $146 million for that. And then 1.1 billion is for the PCCF, the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund, which is a program that we worked jointly on with DOD to train the Pak military and the frontier core along the border to have – to conduct the fight along with border with Afghanistan. So the unique part of the budget, the extraordinary part of the budget is the PCCF. The enduring part of the budget is more of our economic and military assistance that’s going to be sustainable over the long term.
QUESTION: So these are proposals for 2012?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: These are for 2012.
QUESTION: And there’s not much difference between 2012 and 2011?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: It’s a little bit less, because our PCCF number in 2012 was slightly down from 2011 in 2012.
QUESTION: How much was 2011?
QUESTION: How about Colombia? Is it possible to know what specific programs will be affected?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: You’ll have to look at the backup justification – I don't have the programmatic breakout right here in from of me.
QUESTION: Can we have your general comment on how – the difficulty added to creating this year’s budget based on the fact that we haven’t had a Fiscal 11 budget passed and we don’t know what the Fiscal 11 continuing resolution will be like? How is that factored into how you – what your work --
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: It always makes it hard to do a budget – and maybe, I don’t know – [Senior State Department Official One] might want to comment on this, too – where you don’t have the baseline. That’s why we’re using 2010 as our comparison point because it’s the last full year that we have an appropriation for. And given the volatility of 2011 and the numbers that we’re seeing, you couldn’t anchor the 2012 budget to 2011. So 2010 was, for us, sort of the best place to start. It also represents sort of where we are right now on the CR level, which is about 2010 level. So it’s a good approximation for sort of where we are right now.
QUESTION: Can you – a follow-up question is: If the CR is passed at 2010 levels, which is much lower than your 2011 request, would that cause you to rethink your 2012 numbers because – or have you – are you – have you already factored that in? How are you dealing with it?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: Right. I mean, our 2012 request really reflects what we think we need in terms of funding for the Department of State and USAID in 2012.
QUESTION: The question is: Is that based on the assumption that you’re going to get 2011 funding close to your request or close to the CR that we have now or something in between, right? How do you know your need if you don’t know what you already have?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: Well, I mean, obviously, as we go through this process for 2011, we’ll continue to reevaluate what we need. But right now, as we’ve looked at all of our programs, we’ve really made some assumptions about the level of funding that we would need to be able to operate the programs most effectively and most efficiently. And that’s what we have in our 2012 request.
QUESTION: Just one more specific – Yemen, could you talk about Yemen --
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Sure.
QUESTION: -- and how it compares to your previous --
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Sure. So Yemen is one of those places where we did prioritize. We have $120 million of the budget for Yemen. A portion of that is military assistance; a portion of that is economic assistance.
QUESTION: What – and what’s the split?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: It’s about 35 million for military assistance, 68 for 60 – almost 69 million for economic assistance, and then there is about 16 million of sort of other security in other accounts. This is about a $53 million increase over last year. And Yemen is one of those critical --
QUESTION: Over 2010?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Over 2010.
QUESTION: Okay.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Yemen is one of those critical countries that we need to work on in terms of our own security, in terms of helping strengthen the government there and to fight the counterinsurgency fight. It’s – there’s $15 million of that amount that’s a contribution to an international trust fund where we’re trying to work with other donors to help stabilize Yemen. And so Yemen is a priority for us.
QUESTION: I’m sorry, what was the increase? I’m sorry about that.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Sixty -- $53 million.
QUESTION: Could you please specifically --
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Above ’10.
QUESTION: -- the variation for both Cuba and Mexico?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Cuba --
QUESTION: (Inaudible) amounts, but --
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Cuba is the same as 2010. Mexico is down almost 250 million, largely because of the hardware equipment purchases that were – in 2010 that we’re no longer doing in 20 – in 2012.
QUESTION: But that’s the total Mexico amount, including Merida?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Mm-hmm.
MR. CROWLEY: [Senior State Department Official] I want to go back to the point that you were making earlier. I think particularly on the State ops side, we’ve tried to create a ramp in terms of being able to sustain the level of overseas commitments that we have. We have made adjustments in terms of numbers of Foreign Service officers, projected numbers of Civil Service officers, the kind of training requirements they need, language being critical among them. Because we’re now in the second cycle of being able to sustain – not only sustain a number like 1,200 people in Afghanistan, but actually increase it, or be able to increase our component in Iraq as more responsibilities shift from the Defense Department to the State Department.
So we’ve been working on a projected long-term plan to be able to grow the size of the force and sustain our overseas commitments. Now, at some point, if a combination of funding in ’11 and funding of ’12 – we may have to make some programmatic adjustments at a point in time. But what we’re doing is exactly what the military did back in 2001, 2002, 2003 based on a projection of having these long-term commitments in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. We’ve had to increase the size of the force to be able to sustain those. It would be very difficult to sustain the programs overseas if we can’t have confidence that these long-term investment and the funding for long-term investments will be there.
QUESTION: And you’ve already pushed to the right the increase in – and a 25 percent increase in the Foreign Service, but it doesn’t say how long.
MR. CROWLEY: In some cases, I think we – [Senior State Department Official], step in – we’ve projected in the ’11 budget some increase in personnel, which we haven’t executed yet because we’re still uncertain about those.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: Right. We had originally identified 2013 as the year that we would be able to get a 25 percent increase in our Foreign Service staffing. We knew that, given where we are in the 2012 budget, that that will be extended out at least until 2014.
MR. CROWLEY: And the same is true in AID.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL THREE: Yeah, if I can just – we had a similar type of analysis that we needed to do. Originally, the Development Leadership Initiative, which was started at the end of the Bush Administration, projected adding just under about 1,150, I believe, Foreign Service, doubling, in effect, the size of the USAID Foreign Service.
Last year of that initiative – it was a five-year initiative starting in ’08, and that was supposed to be completed in 2012. We are no longer projecting that. We’ve hired about 720 new Foreign Service officers through the end of FY 10. Depending on what – and we’re requesting 95 with the caveat that we’re looking for all of them to be mid-career Foreign Service in order to fill in sort of the missing middle that you probably have heard about in the past about both State and USAID. But USAID’s a particular problem.
Depending on where we are in ’11, we’re projecting at least 2013, 2014 to complete the initiative. We haven’t actually projected out a hard end date, but we know it’ll extend at least a couple of years.
QUESTION: So it’s 95 more for 2012?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL THREE: Yes.
QUESTION: To get us to what, about 800?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL THREE: Well, that would get you to about a little over 800, plus we’re projecting – we had originally requested 200. We’re hoping to still get something in the range of maybe half to three-quarters of those, but it’ll really depend in ’11 on what happens in the appropriation.
QUESTION: I see. And can you talk about USAID operating budgets?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL THREE: Sure, sure. The USAID – again, this is all compared to ’10 – the operating expenses budget goes up $115 million, and there are really three components of that. One is consolidating the big increases, as P.J. and [Senior State Department Official] talked about for State. Similarly, we’ve ramped up from 60-something people in 2008 – direct hires in Afghanistan – to over 300. We’ve ramped up to about a hundred in Pakistan. And we want to consolidate and continue and increase those numbers.
Second is the DLI that I just mentioned, the 95 positions, and some additional civil service positions – about 70 civil service positions – almost all of which are focused on the administrators implementation procurement reform initiative. And the third piece is to consolidate and to continue to expand secure space for AID overseas. In many cases, that’s done in conjunction with OBO buildings, but in some cases where we are separate and going to remain separate at least for a while, we’re trying to expand and increase the security of that space as well.
QUESTION: So where do the tradeoffs come? What was cut from the USAID operating budget in order to square that sort of --
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL THREE: Well, a couple of things. One is we found a lot of savings. We basically have changed the way we deployed the DLIs to make it cheaper. We’re not – and to be honest, we calculated our costs based on experience, so we were able to find some savings there. I think we’re – we are – we had a big infusion of capital space expansion money in FY 10, and because we’re able to carry a lot of that over, we were able to save money in both ’11 and ’12. The ’11 budget had requested significantly less and ’12 continues that. We’re also looking for a variety of other cross-cutting savings like cutting out – and I’m sorry, I’m not – I don’t know off the top of my head the positions, but a number – Russia, if you go to U.S. Administrator Shah, if you go to his U.S. Global Leadership Council speech, talked about this – cutting out some of our attachés in Western countries. We’re doing things as simple as changing a font on our printers, which apparently can save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. And if you look at that over five years, that adds up to $65 million dollars, which isn’t the entire savings we found, but is certainly a big chunk.
QUESTION: Wait, 65 million in fonts? (Laughter.)
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL THREE: No, fonts, attachés, and a number of --
QUESTION: Oh, I see.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL THREE: -- other things over five years, so averaging probably about $12-to-15 million a year.
QUESTION: Do you have any figures for Afghanistan? And of those figures, how much how much has been routed to the government? The Government of Afghanistan has been saying that only a small amount is routed through them.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: I can give you the numbers for Afghanistan. I don’t know off the top of my head what percentage of that is going to the government. I’ll just read the numbers. The – again, the enduring part of our budget, the core part of our budget is $2.3 billion. A hundred and eleven of that is our operational diplomatic platform. And 2.2 of it – billion – is in our foreign assistance and USAID platform. Our OCO budget, our extraordinary costs in Afghanistan, are $2.2 billion. Nine hundred and ninety-two of that million is in our diplomatic platform, and 1.2 billion of it is in extraordinary assistance.
QUESTION: (Inaudible) changes to –
QUESTION: -- upward or down?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Afghanistan is generally down, largely because we’re not requesting as much foreign assistance in ’12 as we did – as we had in ’10 because of the supplemental in ’10 was meant to be sort of a – among the high-water marks, and so we’re now just trying to find what the right level for that is.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: State operations is actually going up and that’s associated with the additional support costs for the increase in staffing, not only for the Department of State but also the Department of State carries the cost for staffing for the other federal agencies that are located in Afghanistan. So it would be, for the most part, Treasury, Agriculture, Justice, et cetera.
QUESTION: Have there been any changes to military aid or assistance to Lebanon?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: No, we are requesting in 2012 $100 million for military assistance to Lebanon. It’s about the same or is the same as 2010. I guess Lebanon is a similar situation we have with other countries in the Middle East where we’ve – where our budget levels reflect prior commitments, but we’re looking very closely at not only the situation in these places, and we’ll have to adjust our assistance programs as the situations there evolve.
QUESTION: Thanks.
QUESTION: Can you talk a little bit about the prospects for realizing the President’s pledge to fund the Global Health Initiative? I mean, I know you do have funding in here, but it seems like that there’s a reality gap that’s growing between what you’re getting and what you want.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Yeah.
QUESTION: How’s that going to – what’s that going to do?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: So we’re still committed to achieving the goals of the Global Health Initiative that was laid – that were laid out at the start of the initiative. Obviously, the funding uncertainty in ’11 is going to – is a concern, and we’re going to try to hit the goals as close to the six-year timeframe as we can. But if the funding doesn’t materialize the way we’ve requested it and – we might have to – we may have to achieve those goals beyond in a seventh or even an eighth year. So we’re not walking away from the commitment. We’re not walking away from the goals. We’re not walking away from the things that the GHI is supposed to do in terms of marrying up both PEPFAR programs and other health programs, but right now the funding, as you mentioned, is going to be a determining factor in when we hit the goals.
MR. CROWLEY: Last question, Josh. Then we’ve got to --
QUESTION: Thanks. If you can explain the thinking behind two specific cuts that were part of this morning’s release – 239 million less than requested in Fiscal 11 for international organizations and peacekeeping, and 624 million less than requested for 2011 for the INL Bureau, and also a 20 percent reduction in the African Development and Inter-American Foundations. Those are three that stood out that I’m wondering if you can explain to us why those were significantly less than last year’s request.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: The INL is probably – and I’ll have – again, I’ll have to get back to you on more details – it’s probably a reflection of the Central America funding coming down as a natural progression of those programs.
The first – your first question was --
QUESTION: African Development and Inter-American Foundations, 20 percent cut.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Those are not –
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL THREE: Not ours.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: -- in our bailiwick. That’s something I would direct to OMB.
QUESTION: Okay, international organizations and peacekeeping?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: For international organizations, we’re requesting $1.6 billion for CIO. There are credits that we are going to be applying in the FY 2012 program. There’s also carryover balances as a result of foreign exchange rates coming in all lower than anticipated in FY 2011. And for the contributions for international peacekeeping, we’re also going to be applying credits to that. It’s $1.9 billion. It will be applying $226 million worth of credits in order to meet all of our billings for FY 2012.
MR. CROWLEY: Okay. We’ve got to get these guys to the Hill. We’ll take a half-hour break and we’ll see you (inaudible).
QUESTION: Thank you.
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PRN: 2011/210