Sep 6, 2017

The Senate’s foreign aid spending panel voted today to slash military assistance to Egypt by $300 million amid growing congressional frustration with the country’s dismal human rights record under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

A summary of the fiscal year 2018 bill from Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the top Democrat on the Appropriations subcommittee overseeing the State Department and foreign assistance, indicates that lawmakers also want to cut economic aid by $37 million compared with current year levels. The subcommittee passed the bill unanimously and the full Senate Appropriations Committee will take it up Thursday.

“There is growing concern in the Congress, and the administration, with the repressive policies of the al-Sisi government,” Leahy told Al-Monitor in an email after the vote. “The United States and Egypt have a long history of cooperation, which we want to see continued. But it is important for the Egyptian people to know that the United States supports freedom of expression, of association and of due process, and when these rights are systematically violated there is a consequence.”

The Senate vote follows similar pushback from the Donald Trump administration, despite the president’s overall support for Sisi’s muscular response to perceived security threats. The State Department recently cut $95.7 million in military and economic aid to the country, Reuters reported last month, while withholding another $195 million in foreign military financing pending progress on human rights and democracy.

The proposed cuts to military assistance are remarkable because they mark a rare attempt to cut a source of bilateral aid that is often justified as a reward for Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel. Egypt has long been a top recipient of US foreign military financing, and the Trump State Department’s budget request for fiscal year 2018 seeks $1.3 billion, just as in years past, even as it proposes slashing aid for most other countries. Similarly, House appropriators voted in July to maintain military aid at current levels.