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Bush May Cut UN Program's Funding - UN Finance - Global Policy Forum
Bush May Cut UN Program's Funding
By Juliet Eilperin and Dana Milbank
Washington Post
June 29, 2002President Bush is heading toward a decision to cut off millions of dollars of funds for an international family planning program opposed by abortion foes, according to people familiar with the plans.
Bush aides said an announcement is still a couple of weeks away, and they cautioned that no final determination has been made. But administration officials said Bush aides directed State Department officials in recent days to devise a plan to eliminate this year's funding for the program, a United Nations effort meant to keep population growth in check.
An adviser to the Bush administration said senior administration officials "expect [the funds] to be permanently withheld." In January, Bush temporarily withheld the $ 34 million Congress had approved for the U.N. Population Fund for this year. Antiabortion groups and conservative lawmakers charged that the U.N. program tacitly condones forced abortions and sterilization in China. A three-person State Department team investigating the allegations returned from China several weeks ago but has not released its findings.
White House officials have made it clear that they expect Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to make the announcement when Arthur E. Dewey, assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, issues a recommendation sometime after July 15.
An announcement, scheduled for about the time when the White House is planning a public campaign to promote adoption, would spark outrage from abortion rights supporters and many Democrats. But it is unlikely that backers of the international family planning funds could assemble enough votes to pass legislation overruling Bush.
Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), meeting with Washington Post reporters and editors yesterday, vowed "a major legislative fight" if Bush cuts off the funds. "We believe strongly that the programs work, that they merit U.S. support and that we should not be so dictatorial as to tell the U.N. not to do that," Daschle said. "We would use whatever legislative tools are available to us."
Antiabortion groups have pressed the White House for months not to release the funds. The Family Research Council wrote to Bush last month to say that funding the family planning program "is tantamount to U.S. support for China's coercive 'one-child' abortion policy."
Opponents of the program cite the Kemp-Kasten amendment, a provision included in every foreign operations spending bill since 1984. It prohibits funding any group that "supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization."
Deal Hudson, the editor of the Catholic magazine Crisis, said yesterday that "this decision sends the message to the U.N. community that the administration is not going to be party to its ideological approach."
U.N. officials deny that the program supports forced abortions or sterilization. They estimated the loss of U.S. funding could undermine their capacity to prevent 800,000 abortions and the deaths of 4,700 women and 77,000 children under the age of five.
Susan A. Cohen, director of government affairs for the Alan Guttmacher Institute, said while the U.N. agency "will survive" without U.S. funds, "It's the women in 142 developing countries including Afghanistan, which the White House purports to care about so much, who are going to suffer as a result of $ 34 million less going to prevent maternal death, infant death and abortions."
The U.N. program has, in the past, been embraced by the Bush administration. Bush asked Congress last year to provide the agency with $ 25 million. Powell has consistently supported the U.N. program, telling a House committee last year that it "provides critical population assistance to developing countries."
Two House Democrats -- New York Reps. Nita M. Lowey and Carolyn B. Maloney -- and two Republicans -- Reps. James C. Greenwood (Pa.) and Doug Ose (Calif.) -- wrote the president last week to demand that he issue the report of the State Department team that visited China in May.
"We are confident that this team, like over 60 diplomatic observers who have already visited the program, will affirm that the U.N. Population Fund is promoting human rights and volunteerism and pushing the Chinese government to respect the fundamental rights of their citizens," they wrote. "Mr. President, as someone who has said he cares deeply about the rights of women around the world, we know you are troubled by the incredible impact this delay is having on women and children."
Before Bush aides directed State Department officials to develop a plan cutting off the program's U.S. funds, the White House Domestic Policy Council drafted a memo to the president based on the delegation's findings, according to administration sources. The memo said the team found the U.N. agency had no direct knowledge or involvement in China's coercive policies but that these practices did go on in some of the Chinese counties where the agency operated.
The memo went on to list several options for the president, ranging from releasing the entire $ 34 million to stopping it altogether. Throughout the missive, sources said, the DPC identified how each option would be perceived by Senate Democrats or abortion opponents.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush aides are reviewing information from the State Department's mission to China but he declined to comment on the administration's conclusion. "The State Department has indicated they expect to have an announcement in early to mid-July," he said.
Senate Democrats negotiated with House Republicans for weeks in order to forge last year's spending agreement covering the program. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who brokered last year's agreement, said it would be "a shortsighted, bad idea to kill family planning funds." He said he would not provide the administration with the same level of "wiggle room" in next year's foreign aid bill if Bush eliminates this year's funding.
Staff writer Amy Goldstein contributed to this report.
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