operations and related programs will come to order today we're very pleased to welcome them back to randall tobias administrative the u s agency for international development and director of foreign assistance we're very pleased to have you join us to discuss the president's fiscal year two thousand and eight request for the agency for international development and other related development programs as you well know from my many discussions i'm a strong supporter of u s aids development work around the world particularly they work to strengthen and empower women educated women marry later have fewer children receive better prenatal care their children have higher survival rates better health and nutrition and i'm a likely to succeed in school today on international women's day i want to recognize women around the world who are the backbone of their societies and africa and the middle east i've been impressed with the knowledge experience and dedication of your mission directors and staff and i know you are aware of what a valuable asset you have and are doing what you need to do to retain diplomatic and development programs are our first line of defense and i agree with the need to increase our international affairs budget but i am disappointed that funding for essential programs like family planning child maternal health and other development was decreased as you know the united states plays scenic role among donors we focus on long term development goals as well as short term humanitarian intervention we have staff with development expertise deployed throughout the world providing technical assistance from basic education to a aids to the recent progress combat a malaria we have demonstrate that these programs are effective so when secretary rice announced your appointment and the new transformational diplomacy agenda many of us i am particular were very pleased with the focus on accountability transparency and coherence and i applaud your highly ambitious plan to rationalize and streamline the use of taxpayer resources to achieve the measurable impact through our development assistance programs overseas however its execution has raised a number of deep concerns for many of us in congress as well as in the administration and the and geo community first the central fashion we spent a great deal of time working with the previous administration in d c centralizing decision making to the experts in the field my understanding is that under the new process a usaid mission directors the very people who interact on a daily basis with government ministries and local n g o s have no formal role in the country teens form instead of drawing on their knowledge of the political and economic conditions on the ground you have concentrated authority for decision making in interagency country teams comprised of budget and desk offices and other bureaucrats in washington some who may be very capable this seems counterintuitive however and counterproductive your budget requests raises additional questions about this restructuring process the administration commitment to long term development and the way our foreign aid is allocated i am deeply concerned about the shift of development assistance funds to economic support the traditional objectives  f have been to strengthen markets improve economic growth and develop democratic institutions without a doubt these functions are critical but so are efforts to improve health educate children and provide opportunity through community strengthening activities moving funding from the d a account to an account that has other priorities could lead to a shift in funding away from long term development programs diminishing the united states critical role in developing countries additionally while your f y two thousand a budget provides a clearer picture of some country level programs it does not detail spent specific sector an issue it is within countries and i do look forward to this submission being corrected furthermore the congressional budget justification did not include information about funding for some sectors that are of great importance for example funding levels for micro enterprise safe water programs when are provided can you provide information about funding levels for these programs and assurances to congress that they will remain priorities in the coming year finally your initial documentation indicates that some programs including maternal and child health and family planning a facing significant cut these programs are the building blocks for better health and just last week and bassett a diable spoke of the need to integrate hiv aids interventions into the public health infrastructure that has been built over the years to support primary health care and i applaud the additional support provided in the f y two thousand a proposed budget for h i v aids and malaria programs but are we not undermining our entire investment in primary health care and i have efforts to address h r the aids malaria by perpetuating a trend toward disease based interventions without funding basic health care additionally in your budget justification i'm a fan and we've had many conversations about this about reform that makes sense but some of the reforms with great respect that you've undertaken simply in my judgment do not pass that test so i really do look forward to your remarks which i hope will address these concerns and i  several years ago i had an amendment which was offered to set up the health commission i think you're actually in them are following their activities i think you'd have to say they get an f as of today they are fundamentally failing the fact is i'm thinking of doing a letter to the  ministration asking that they be disbanded and the money be put into something else and i would ask you i looked did you see the report that the canadians put out with regard to their  aid program i'm going to ask a question i ask you i do we need to be really bold and i'd ask you to go back and look at the people that are serving or they're good people i mean i don't question they have forgotten more than most people will ever know but to see how we can be just so bold otherwise i would ask that you make a decision within thirty days just to disband the commission because it will be an embarrassment it will be an embarrassment to i think to the bush administration it will be an embarrassment to those who are serving on both sides to come up with frankly nothing because most people believe that our aid and i know there are a lot of great people doing a good thing really has not dramatically ordered or changed for the better paul throws book if you read dark star safari talks about when he was in africa in the seventy's he returns to africa a chicken bus for one year from cairo all the way down it every place he returns to is worse off and so we need a fundamental  additional funding i'm for spending more money i'm not for less but to spend it in an appropriate way and also how much did you read frank easterlies book frank easterlies book and so i'm going to ask  questions about that to see what we can do to really make this work very very well but again thank you for your service and thank all the people a id for their service witness your wisdom i am i am i was on a roller coaster as we were so late for this hearing i apologize i lo oh sorry what's wrong whether i too on the on the occasion of international women's day i especially want to recognize the strong and constant advocacy on behalf of women worldwide i have in fact submitted a longer written statement i have an oral statement here but i think in view of the time constraints this afternoon i will find me use this term yield back to you the time you've given me for an opening statement and we'll we'll get on to what's probably of more interest  as i mentioned in my statement i have been very concerned about your request to shift resources from d a to e s f and the f y two thousand eight request cuts the development assistance account by four hundred sixty seven million from the f y o six enacted in the f y o seven c r rate this represents a cut of over thirty percent and at the same time the  account is increased by seven hundred three million from f y o six inactive levels now as you well know the d a account was created to meet our long term development objectives through program choose agriculture food security education economic growth poverty reduction and yes and funding was established to provide greater flexibility in special instances where more assistance was needed then could be justified it seems through your requests and other recent actions that the administration is turning more often to the flexible authorities of the e s f account rather than requesting and justifying assistance under the regular accounts of v a in jobs so first of all has all of the four hundred sixty seven million from v a been transferred to us have if not can you tell us exactly how much of the cut from v a is this shift to the usa if and if you could explain to us if you plan to fund the very same programs that it would would have been funded and da why did you activities in the rebuilding and restrictive countries to the south and to prioritize to the developing in transforming countries the development assistance on the theory that development assistance was intended to support poor countries that are demonstrating performance and that is half was intended to support under special economic political or security conditions programs prioritize to support those kinds of activities that one would expect to find in rebuilding and restrictive countries the answer to your fundamental question is that  fact of the matter is however and it's probably important to understand in the past the only thing i have had or you have had really to understand how we're spending the money is the accounts the accounts were the very last thing that i looked at because when we put the budget together we put the budget together on a country by country basis with a very detailed set of breakout says to the categories where the money will be spent based on the priorities in those countries and then after those country budgets were put together we cross walk those with the accounts to see what is the best account to pay with  pay for this out of so the accounts have not been a real driver for me because they're going to be some many much better sources for you to see and for us to see in greater detail than we've ever been able to see before exactly where is this money going well let me give you a specific example was one area where there was a significant shift of funding from v a to e s f is basic education and the result is a dramatic movement of funds that paints a disturbing picture for example of the fifty two countries with existing basic education programs twenty two a facing cuts to those programs seven more ha out east timor guinea india madagascar mexico naipaul and south africa maybe you can explain why the request has zero about education funding for these seven countries maybe they've reached a point where we think they get an a but i have great suspicion that they still could you know how to bring it up to accept a performed i would like to be able to tell you because i know of your interest in this subject and you know mine i would like to be able to tell you that the fact that there was a three percent increase over all from zero six to zero eight in basic education and that this is the largest basic education request that the administration has ever made i would like to be able to tell you perhaps that i edict it but that's not how it came about the basic education budget is simply  of the basic education priorities that our country teams including the mission directors in the ambassadors and others who've been involved in the process along the way have determined where the priorities in their countries the places where we could spend the money and make the most difference and as you can see what has come out of this process is a very high priority placed placed on on basic education basic education funds that are focused in the rebuilding and developing countries in fact are up forty four percent from  i don't have the individual country programs in my head but obviously would be glad to you know do the data for you and i will be more than happy to take the budget apart and put it together side by side so that perhaps we could see more clearly exactly how would this have looked if we had proposed to pay for it out of the da and e s f accounts in the way it's been done in the past and how is it proposed in this budget because there's there's no alter your motive here at all i'm just trying to get it focused if the doesn't work we'll do it a different way well i thank you so much jim because i'm holding myself to that red light we can continue this discussion but i'll turn to mr wolf i thank the chair i want to go in a little bit and let me just say personally i don't think you should hold yourself to that light i think it's appropriate that has not benefited from the last forty years of significant global growth it is unacceptable the average citizen in sub saharan africa has not experienced a real increase in his or her well derian being since independence they had four hundred witnesses from all over the world so the committee has concluded that all players in sub saharan africa have failed that region slow on accountable and poorly designed development assistance in effective foreign aid institutions in africa including the canadian international development agency have also failed to achieve sustained improvement in the quality of life of african citizens the committee has concluded that forty years of foreign aid has done little to propel africa from economic stagnation or to improve the quality of life on the continent therefore the international community including canada was radically changes approach to international development in sub saharan africa what do you think about this i mean it do you believe that we should really just dramatically change or and i don't think anybody can criticize the administration for its sincerity and for the level of funding i think probably this administration on most of these have done more than many others have ever thought they would but what are your feelings about this and i will ask you to take a look at this study i welcome the opportunity to do that i'm looking here at my no from my oral statement because summer somewhere in here i made reference to the fact that there's an old saying that if you're not clear about where you're trying to go all roads lead there and i think that that is true true of the way in which we and the international development community indeed have approached foreign assistance development assistance historically it's had a thousand agendas the agenda has been focused on you know kind of individual one of these and one of those in a little bit of that as opposed to what we're trying to do in the relook that secretary rice has asked me to take a foreign assistance of saying what do we need to do to be sure that countries understand the united states foreign assistance should not be viewed as a permanent source of revenue for that country but rather it ought to be seen as an investment that the american people are making with the expectation that there's going to be an up trajectory that we're going to help that country in to get to the point where they have addressed democracy they've addressed health care they've addressed education rights for women and ultimately economic growth so that they can sustain that and i think if you look at much of what we have done in the development community over the years it's been