Jan 4, 2019

House Democrats sharply rebuked Egypt over its human rights record on Thursday, putting Cairo on a path to lose $300 million in military assistance this year.

As part of a spending package for the rest of the 2019 fiscal year, Democrats slashed Egypt’s annual $1.3 billion in military aid, appropriating only $1 billion in a mostly party-line vote.

The bill is stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate, which is demanding funding for a border wall with Mexico as part of a compromise to end the government shutdown. House Democrats adopted legislative language that originated in the Republican-controlled Senate last year rather than writing their own spending bill to make the point that there’s already bipartisan agreement on everything except the wall. Senate Republicans for their part have long sought cuts in Egyptian military assistance.

In recent months, Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., the new chairwoman of the House spending panel, signaled that she is on board with the Egypt cuts. As Al-Monitor first reported last year, Lowey signed on to a letter that called on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to take action to free detained American citizens in Egypt.

“The dynamic change with Lowey becoming chair of the full House Appropriations Committee … would imply that there would be a different way forward on this,” Jared Genser, an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law, who is critical of Egypt, told Al-Monitor in a December interview. “Egypt is facing the prospect of real cuts on assistance, and obviously on human rights conditions there will no longer [be] any debate about human rights being in the bill or not.”