Subject: Senate rejects Rand Paul Amendment to Cut USAID 87-10
From: "Jason Gross" <[email-masked]>
To: "Jason Gross" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2017 21:49:51 +0000

Dear Board of Directors,

I wanted to give a quick readout of a pretty remarkable day. In short, Senator Paul set his sights directly on USAID and his amendment to cut USAID by about 50% was overwhelmingly defeated in about 45 minutes.

Here's a quick summary of the today's activity:

§  After signals throughout the week that the amendment would not be considered, Senator Paul's threat to keep the Senate in session through the weekend ultimately led to him offering the amendment - which would have offset $15 billion in Hurricane Harvey relief with cuts to USAID.

§  We monitored this process intensely, alerted our partners and allies to the possibility, and lined up assets to weigh in if the situation changed at the last moment - which it ultimately did. We had a quick heads up from leadership staff late this morning and about an hour later Senators were voting.

§  After Senator Paul offered his amendment, Majority Leader McConnell immediately called for a motion to table the dangerous amendment, which passed in a resounding 87-10 vote. Here's our statement<http://www.usglc.org/newsroom/usglc-ceo-statement-senate-vote-rejecting-massive-usaid-cut-offset-harvey-aid/>.
Kudos to Lindsay Plack and our Government Relations team who watched this situation like a hawk and pivoted to weigh-in immediately with Senate offices and to enlist our allies in the coalition to do the same. And a big thank you to Board Members and their organizations who helped during this extremely tight response time.

Here's our analysis on the votes:

§  The ten Senators who voted no on the motion to table and thus supported allowing the Paul amendment to proceed were Senators Paul, Cruz, Flake, Heller, Inhofe, Lankford, Lee, Risch, Scott, and Toomey.

§  Of those Senators, a few had been on record supporting a similar Paul amendment.  The three most and surprising and disturbing votes in favor of proceeding with the Paul Amendment were from Senators Flake, Scott, and Toomey.

§  Admittedly, there was confusion on the floor about the "motion to table" the vote, with some Senators confused about whether a no vote was opposing or supporting Paul.  Initially, our strongest champions Senators Corker, Graham, and McCain all voted no before realizing their mistake and changing their vote at the last minute.
Nonetheless, it stands that ten Senators chose not to table the Paul amendment when they had the chance to do so. In response, the USGLC will be kicking off two mobilizations: one to thank the 87 Senators who voted to table the motion and one to express our disappointment to the 10 Senators who voted in support of the amendment. We will also engage senior staff in these office directly.  We will be enlisting our campaign partners in this effort, and we hope that board members will join in as well.

A few more updates
The Paul amendment wasn't the only action on the International Affairs Budget this week:

·        The House is currently debating the State-Foreign Operations bill and amendments as part of the 8-bill omnibus. We are working closely with our coalition partners to monitor the floor debate and mobilize against any concerning amendments. One quick highlight:

o   Representative Buck of Colorado offered an amendment to eliminate the U.S. Institute of Peace and cut the topline allocation by the same amount (about $35 million). When a similar amendment was offered a few years ago it received 168 votes.  This year, however, it failed by voice vote-a big win in protecting not only the topline allocation but also an important agency within the International Affairs Budget.

·        The Senate Appropriations Committee approved their version of the State-Foreign Operations bill today. Senators Graham and Leahy have done tremendous work to protect the topline allocation for this bill as much as possible and both made strong statements that it is still not enough.  There is a lot to like in this bill but one quick highlight:

o   The report includes a strong rebuke of the idea of merging USAID into the State Department.  Specifically, it prohibits funds from being used to "close, move or otherwise incorporate USAID" into the State Department, requires congressional notification on efforts the "redesign" plan, and requests a GAO report on any redesign plan.
Look for much more on all of this activity in our USGLC Budget Update tomorrow with detail on the House action and the Senate bill.

And please keep an eye out early next week for an op-ed from Liz placing a spotlight on the nonmilitary aspects of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.

Lastly - we're looking forward to seeing you at our October Board Meeting. Please hold the time beginning at 8:30am on Wednesday, October 4 through 1:00pm on Thursday, October 5 at St. Regis (923 16th Street NW, Washington, D.C.).

We don't expect to use all of this time, but as we work to secure our high-level speakers, we're trying to keep our agenda as flexible as possible in order to maximize visits from our special guests, as well as using your time effectively.  We look forward to sharing with you our confirmed speakers and schedule in the next few weeks.  Please RSVP to Emily Benovitz at [email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]> and if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

More soon,
Jason
Jason J. Gross| Executive Director | [email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]> | p: (202) 730-4171
U.S. Global Leadership Coalition<http://www.usglc.org/> | 1129 20th Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036 | @USGLC<http://www.twitter.com/USGLC