CONGRESS, which has tried and failed to control U.S. foreign policy since 1985, may have better luck this year. But that is only because it is giving President Clinton pretty much what he wants.
Remembering that Clinton vetoed last year's authorizing bill, as every president has for the past 11 years, the House International Relations Committee has been surprisingly bipartisan in its de-lib-er-ations on the Foreign Policy Reform Act.It approved $32.4 billion in diplomatic and foreign aid spending over the next two years - $16.4 billion for 1998 and $16 billion for 1999 - rejecting Republican efforts to cut $2.9 billion and place other curbs on our overseas assistance programs.
In fact, the committee added $360 million to the bill before its final vote, bringing it to almost what the Clinton administration had requested.
There was some grumbling about the "untouchable" money we give Israel and Egypt, $3 billion and $2.1 billion annually, making them the biggest U.S. aid recipients. Rep. Tom Campbell, R-Calif , pointed out that current aid allocations amount to $215 for each Israeli, $14 for each Egyptian and just $1.73 for each sub-Saharan African.
He proposed a minuscule one-tenth of a percent aid cut for both Israel and Egypt to divert $6.5 million to African nations. But that didn't fly. His colleagues decided that Middle East peace was more important than the welfare of impoverished Africans - even though the $200 billion we have spent on Israel and Egypt since they signed the 1979 Camp David accords has brought precious little peace to their region.
The committee did warn Egypt that it might suffer "reductions" in aid if it does not live up to its Camp David commitment to develop normal relations with Israel. But there was no similar wrist slap for Israel, which has been less than enthusiastic about honoring its Oslo accord with the Palestinians since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to power.
The bill also makes no provisions for paying the $1.3 billion in U.S. arrears to the United Nations, nor the $2 billion we owe the World Bank and other international lending agencies that are an adjunct of foreign aid.
But it does address some of what Committee Chairman Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y., called "the most serious foreign policy challenges facing the United States, the need to reform our foreign assistance programs and the operations of our foreign affairs agencies."
For example, the bill would require the administration to set "graduation dates" for aid recipients, cutting them off after they become self-sufficient. It would also channel more aid to the non-governmental organizations such as charities and private volunteer agencies that do more good than the governments of some countries where they operate.
It would restrict aid to Russia if it continues to sells arms and nuclear components to rogue states such as Iran. And it would abolish the drug certification program that ranks the aid and loan eligibility of our Latin American neighbors by how well they cooperate with Wash-ington's war on drugs.
This year's certification process, which approved Mexico and disapproved Colombia, angered both countries.
Of course, the bill may change before it reaches the House floor. And it would have to be reconciled with a Senate version that may not be so kind. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is chaired by Jesse Helms, R-N.C., not a big fan of foreign aid or the State De-part-ment.
Helms has been somewhat mollified by an administration proposal to eliminate two agencies that frequently draw his ire. The U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and the U.S. Information Agency will both be folded into the State Department over the next two years.
But Helms is not pleased with the survival of the U.S. Agency for International Development, a huge bureaucracy that often dwarfs U.S. embassies abroad and spends a lot of taxpayers' money. USAID remains his pet peeve.