PAI Urges Congress to Ignore Budget Proposal and Preserve Funding for International Family Planning

Washington, DC - February 6, 2006

During last Tuesday's annual State of the Union Address, President Bush proclaimed that “for people everywhere, the United States is a partner for a better life” and admonished that short-changing these cooperative efforts would “increase the suffering and chaos of our world, undercut our long-term security, and dull the conscience of our country.” The President urged Congress “to serve the interests of America by showing the compassion of America.”

Today, however, in releasing his federal budget for fiscal year 2007, the President ignored his own impassioned words by proposing significant cuts in funding for foreign assistance programs benefiting the health and empowerment of women and children.

Funding for family planning and reproductive health programs in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia takes a large hit – a $77 million reduction from the amount appropriated by Congress last year within the Child Survival and Health Programs Fund. This is more than half of the cut proposed for traditional health activities in order to pay for new presidential initiatives to combat malaria and avian influenza. The toll could climb even higher and reach $100 million if the President’s suggestion that any contribution for the United Nations Population Fund be siphoned off from this same bilateral account is accepted by Congress, further squeezing scarce financial resources available to the U.S. Agency for International Development to help the women of Africa and Asia.

In addition, the budget ominously omits for the first time during the Bush administration a top-line number for overall international family planning funding from all bilateral accounts, including funds designated for politically-important nations and countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

For the first five years of the Bush administration, overall funding for international family planning by the U.S. government has remained stagnant (see  Trends in U.S. Population Assistance), and now a significant funding cut is being proposed. This belies the President's stated belief that family planning is a key strategy to reduce the number of abortions. With regard to international family planning and reproductive health funding, the President needed to ensure that his budget proposal measured up to the soaring rhetoric of the State of the Union address. It clearly does not. We urge Congress to disregard the President’s budget proposal and to preserve funding for these critically important and necessary health programs.During last Tuesday's annual State of the Union Address, President Bush proclaimed that “for people everywhere, the United States is a partner for a better life” and admonished that short-changing these cooperative efforts would “increase the suffering and chaos of our world, undercut our long-term security, and dull the conscience of our country.” The President urged Congress “to serve the interests of America by showing the compassion of America.”

Population Action International (PAI) works to improve individual well-being and preserve global resources by mobilizing political and financial support for population, family planning and reproductive health policies and programs.