US bill threatens to cut PA funding if UN grants statehood

House Republicans will seek billions of dollars in cuts to US foreign operations, but a spending bill published Thursday maintains security money for Israel and Jordan.

A section of the bill mandates the termination of economic assistance to the Palestinian Authority should it obtain full membership to the United Nations or UN agencies without Israeli agreement.

Moreover, US Secretary of State John Kerry can limit American funding if the PA doesn’t demonstrate “a firm commitment to peaceful co-existence with the State of Israel” or is not “taking appropriate measures to counter terrorism and terrorist financing in the West Bank and Gaza, including the dismantling of terrorist infrastructures, and is cooperating with appropriate Israeli and other appropriate security organizations.”

In addition, the bill puts new restrictions on aid if the Palestinians try to pursue actions against Israel at the International Criminal Court.

The bill places similar restrictions on foreign aid to Afghanistan and Pakistan should they fail to meet “benchmarks for measuring progress, including “establishing conditions conducive to the rule of law and transparent and accountable governance.”

The draft budget will allocate $3.1 billion in military aid to Israel, and another $1.3 billion to Egypt.

The move will likely spark opposition from the White House and the Democratic-led Senate.

The House Appropriations Committee’s bill for next year gives full funding to embassy security in order to prevent a repeat of last year’s deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya.

But it cuts heavily in other places, taking spending down to $34.1 billion, $8 billion lower than last year, a 26 percent cut overall to foreign aid.

“Given all of the country’s needs and fiscal realities, we must prioritize our very limited funds on only the most important international activities,” Rep. Hal Rogers, a Republican, said. His bill, he said, decreases funding for “lower-priority programs or those that we simply cannot afford at this time.”

These include all of the State Department’s money to combat climate change and promote clean technology, as well as funding for several UN and international organizations.

The US Agency for International Development’s budget would drop around 11 percent to $1.4 billion, while the State Department’s funding level for foreign government assistance would fall by a quarter to $17.3 billion.

And Republicans are seeking again to block US funds to any UN body or international family-planning group that may be involved in abortion, a change that the Senate has knocked down several times since Obama overturned the policy of President George W. Bush.

Much in the bill is unlikely to ever become law. Since leaving the Senate for his State Department post, Secretary of State John Kerry has repeatedly made the case that foreign assistance programs represent less than 1% of the federal budget, far less than the impression given by some lawmakers. The White House, too, opposes extreme cuts to foreign operations.

Like other agencies, the State Department has suffered from the across-the-board automatic spending reductions that went into effect earlier this year. This has forced the United States to cut $2.6 billion in global humanitarian aid, security funds and other international programs in some of the world’s most unstable regions.

“Faced with billions of dollars in spending cuts, this bill focuses on national security programs that keep the United States and our allies secure, while anticipating continued change around the world. Funding is prioritized for embassy security, critical strategic partners in the Middle East and Latin America, democracy assistance, and life-saving HIV/AIDS and refugee programs,” subcommittee Chairwoman Kay Granger (R-Texas) said in a statement.