Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Ct., on Monday unveiled what he called a “21st century Marshall Plan” to dramatically increase funding for U.S. diplomacy and counter plans by the Trump administration to slash funding for the State Department and other foreign aid.
The proposal would roughly double the federal foreign affairs budget with a $131 billion increase over five years. Murphy, who spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the increase would set a marker against the Trump administration, which recently unveiled its own plans for a 30 percent State Department budget cut that would be used to beef up the military.
Murphy, a member of the Senate Appropriations and Foreign Relations committees, called Trump’s view of foreign policy “medieval” and said the United States must focus more on diplomacy and development aid if it wants to solve serious problems such as the Syrian civil war, global terrorism and pandemics.
“For the majority of smart thinkers on global security that know that our foreign affairs budget is badly underfunded today, we need to be on offense,” Murphy said.
The big funding boost would also come with a plan to streamline operations by the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development by creating central funds to deal with global crises.
Murphy said he hopes those who read his proposal do no think he has “gone mad” by believing the changes have a chance of passing in Congress.
“I understand that today this not a realistic proposal but it’s a marker,” he said. “It’s a marker for where we should be and a marker for the coming debate so that the terms don’t start such that flat funding is on one side and a devastating 30 percent cut is on the other.”
Murphy ripped Trump’s plan for what he described as a “big Army and a bigger mote,” but also said global security did not improve under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama because their administrations also did not adequately fund diplomacy and development aid.
Military and intelligence spending outpaced diplomacy and development by 20 to 1, Murphy told the think tank audience.
“Think about it this way: We have more people working at military grocery stores today than we have diplomats in the State Department. That’s insanity,” he said.
However, the department might not make out too badly this year, despite the Trump administration plan, Murphy said.
Congress will likely keep its funding flat or may even make some increases, he predicted.
