Dear friends,
POMED and the Heinrich Böll Foundation of North America are pleased to announce the release of a new publication,The Federal Budget and Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2012: Democracy,Democracy, Governance, and Human Rights in the Middle East. .
This report offers a detailed look at the U.S. funding and assistance for democracy and governance in the Middle East, the Congressional appropriations process, and implications for U.S. policy in the Middle East during this turbulent time. In the wake of the Arab uprisings and amid an extremely constrained domestic budget environment, it is important to examine U.S. funding for the Middle East and the impact on U.S. relations with the region.
This publication focuses on several key questions: What have been the impact of the Arab uprisings on U.S. assistance to the Middle East and North Africa? What are the most significant changes to U.S. funding and appropriations from previous years? What has been the impact of the U.S. deficits and budget cuts on funding for the Middle East? What does U.S. funding tell us about the priorities of the Obama administration and its policy response to the events in the Middle East? And what may we expect from Congress in its upcoming appropriations process?
The report is available to view or download as a PDF on our website.
In addition, we will be holding a public dicsussion of the report today, from 2:00pm-3:30pm, in Rayburn House Office Building Room 2200. POMED Executive Director Stephen McInerney, the report's author, will provide an overview of the publication's findings. To provide commentary, we are excited to have Daniel Brumberg (Senior Adviser ot the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention at the United States Institute of Peace) and Michael Ryan (Senior Research Associate at the Jamestown Foundation). Please RSVP for the event by clicking here or by emailing rsvp@pomed.org. Or, call us at (202) 828-9660 with any questions.
Lastly, if you have been forwarded this email, you can sign up to receive future notices from POMED by providing your information here.
All the best,
Stephen McInerney
Executive Director
Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED)
Note: This year, there are major differences in the Congressional budget and appropriations process. Delays in Congress, combined with the extraordinary and unexpected uprisings that have swept the region since January, mean that the numbers submitted by the administration for the FY12 budget are now less relevant than usual, since they take into account neither the dramatic events in the Middle East nor the sharp cuts enacted by Congress for FY11. Nonetheless, we have decided that it is important for a preliminary version of this report to be released now, before Congress begins work on the relevant appropriations bills for Fiscal Year 2012. After all of the budget information for FY 2011 is finalized by the administration, POMED will release a revised edition of this report containing all of the usual tables and graphs highlighting numbers that are still unavailable. We expect to release this revised report in September, pending the administration’s schedule in finalizing and releasing all of the remaining budget information.