$250 million wasn't all the money US Secretary of State John FN Kerry wanted to leave in Egypt while American children suffer due to the sequester. Congress actually
prevented him from leaving a lot more on the table according to House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Ca).
“This is not the aid package that the administration wanted to
announce,” Royce told The Hill. The administration wanted to release a
“larger sum,” but bowed to the wishes of Royce's committee as well as
congressional appropriators, he said.
Royce wouldn't say how much Kerry had hoped to announce, but the State
Department has been pressing Congress to greenlight $450 million in
direct aid since last fall.
“Our approach is not the full-throttle administration approach of
delivering all the aid that they wanted to deliver, but rather a
measured approach of tying tranches to results as it pertains to the
peace treaty with Israel, to cooperation with respect to smuggling [into
Gaza] and with respect to economic reforms to guarantee civil rights
and the rule of law within Egypt,” he said. “That's the pressure that
we're applying.”
Kerry announced the new aid package last Sunday during a stop in Cairo
as part of his first trip overseas. The money includes $190 million in
budgetary support that's part of the $1 billion in debt relief President
Obama pledged in 2011, along with $60 million for an enterprise fund.
The choices a government used to have to make were guns or butter. The Obama administration has added a new wrinkle: Guns for our enemies or butter for our children. Guns for the US military aren't even under consideration.
What could go wrong?
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