Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. House have joined together to kill all funding for the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), a Cold War-era government think tank that’s performed work in Iraq and won praise for resolving conflicts in Afghanistan.

 

Led by Republican Jason Chaffetz of Utah and Democrat Anthony Weiner of New York, some House lawmakers say the USIP wastes too much money to be kept around. Weiner claims the institute does good work, but questions its need for taxpayer funding when it “raises millions from corporations and private interests.”

 

The USIP has asked for $54 million in funding, an amount that has become magnified by the swanky new building near the Capitol Mall that will become the institute’s new home. As Al Kamen at The Washington Post wrote:

 

“Perhaps if its 325 staff members all toiled overseas or hunkered down in some creaky offices downtown, it wouldn't have become so exposed. But, as the two lawmakers noted, there’s that curiously shaped 150,000-square-foot, $183 million new office building in a prime location near the Lincoln Memorial that it is soon moving into.”

 

USIP officials point out the successes they’ve had, as has America’s top commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, who said the institute helped stabilize an area known as the “Triangle of Death.”

 

Not all members of House of Representatives oppose funding the USIP. Rep. Mike Honda (D-California) has pointed out that the entire annual budget of the USIP is the equivalent of what the United States spends in Afghanistan every three hours.

 

The Senate is likely to restore the institute’s funding in its version of the budget. But what happens to the USIP when the spending plan goes to conference committee is anybody’s guess.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Just Give Peace a Chance? (by Al Kamen, Washington Post)

Don’t Cut Peace Institute (by Mike Honda and Stephen D. Krasner, Contra Costa Times)