An Indiana congressman suggested cutting the United States’ foreign aid budget — choking off supplies to refugees around the world — to keep a Navy stunt pilot group in the air.

Earlier this month, Rep. Larry Bucshon (R-IN) gave a sit-down interview with local television station WJTS, and when sequestration came up, Buchson was saddened by the grounding of the Navy’s Blue Angels stunt flying group.

Luckily, Bucshon knows where to cut the federal budget to make room for the Angels to take to the sky again — the U.S.’ foreign aid overseas:

BUSCHON: Well, it costs about $37 million for the Blue Angels to fly for an entire year. Okay. The President just went overseas and offered some — Jordan, $150 million in more aid. We just offered other countries millions of dollars in more foreign aid. Yet we can’t continue to fund one of the biggest promoters of the military that helps them with recruiting and also has such a big impact on local economies when they show up for their airshows. That we have to not do that yet we can give millions of dollars in foreign aid when we’re holding back on our own citizens.

Watch the interview here:

The funding Buschon describes serves an important purpose. During his trip to Jordan in March, President Obama announced an increase in U.S. funding to Syrian refugees who fled the ongoing conflict in their country. Over 500,000 Syrian refugees currently make their home in Jordan, with the 175,000 in the Zartarri refugee camp making it the 5th largest city in the country. Even with the Obama administration’s pledge, the funding request for humanitarian aid to Syrian refugees remains more than $500 million short of what’s needed.

Buschon, unfortunately, isn’t alone in his desire to cut out crucial foreign aid to reduce federal spending. The already treacherous ground for increasing foreign aid has only grown more fraught since the impact of sequestration kicked in. His fellow Republicans — often citing foreign aid as a much greater percentage of the budget than the less than 1 percent it currently makes up — have been seeking to reduce international funding since retaking the House of Representatives in 2011.

The Somali famine of 2011 was a massive, monstrous failure on the part of the international community at almost all levels. A new report released on Thursday indicates that the crisis took the lives of a far greater number than many experts predicted: Up to 260,000 Somalis died that year, over half of them children, largely due to the world’s slow response.

While it can’t be known for certain, a set of proposals from the Obama administration to completely revamp food aid might be able to prevent future tragedies of this scale from happening. Currently, U.S. law says that 85 percent of all international food aid must be purchased from the United States, then shipped from our shores to the country in need. Under the new format, introduced in President Obama’s FY 2014 proposed budget, the amount of food required to be produced in the United States would drop to 55 percent, with the rest of it being purchased from local sources through donated cash.

As Secretary of State John Kerry told the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week, having the ability to buy more food locally could make all the difference in a humanitarian crisis — such as in Somalia — in getting food to those in need faster, while saving the United States money:

KERRY: By giving us the ability to modernize, including the flexibility to also procure food aid in developing countries closer to the crisis areas, not only do we feed more people, but we get food to malnourished people 11 to 14 weeks faster. So here’s the bottom line: This change allows us to do more, to help more people lift themselves out of hunger at a rapid pace without spending more money. I think that’s a great deal for the American taxpayer.

USAID Director Ravij Shah explained during his own appearance before Congress last week that under the new proposals as many as 4 million extra people would be reached per year without an increase in the foreign aid budget. Without the new system, Shah warned, about 150,000 children in Somalia would cease to receive food aid from the U.S. as other hotspots around the world consume the fifteen percent of food aid able to purchased locally. Such a decrease would prove devastating in the event of another massive crisis on the same scale as Somalia’s.

While a 2006 proposal to increase food aid flexibility to 25 percent failed, the odds are looking better for the new attempt. Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) and Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) — the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee respectively — put out a letter supporting the initiative following the release of President Obama’s budget. Despite that, pressure is growing from agricultural interests such as the American Farm Bureau Federation and lawmakers from states with large farming populations to water down — or outright kill — the proposal.

CAP experts in a 2012 report called for the restructuring of the U.S.’ food aid program in a similar fashion to the method the administration is advancing. “At a minimum, we recommend that nonemergency food aid be exempt from both cargo preference and “buy American” requirements,” the report suggests, adding that “cost savings from these reforms would vary from year to year depending on fluctuations in food assistance. We estimate, however, that efficiency gains would range from $488 million to $628 million annually.”

(Photo Credit: Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images)

Tensions within the Republican Party on foreign policy reemerged on Thursday with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) taking a broad shot at the vision of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and his allies.

At an event at the Center for New American Security (CNAS), McCain took several not so subtle swipes at Paul’s recent attempts to take on the GOP’s foreign policy orthodoxy and singled out the anti-drone filibuster Paul led in March as an example of Republicans yielding to political pressure to back something easy rather than asking tough questions about foreign policy:

McCAIN: Last month, most Republican senators joined a filibuster to protest the President’s policies on the use of armed drones. Rather than debating the very real issues associated with targeted killings, my colleagues chose to focus instead on the theoretical possibility that the President would use a drone to kill Americans on U.S. soil, even if they’re not engaged in hostilities. As misguided as this exercise was, the political pressures on Republicans were significant and many ultimately did — including many who know better.

While he did not name names, among the more senior Republicans who joined in the filibuster were Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX). McCain in the immediate aftermath of the drones filibuster referred to Paul and co-filibuster leader Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) as “wacko birds,” a phrase he later apologized for using.

McCain admitted that the GOP needs to change its positions on counter-terrorism and other policies, listing several measures he would be putting forward in the coming weeks and months, including an update to the the 2001 Authorization of the Use of Military Force, which his fellow Republicans are likely to embrace. Others, like revisions to U.S. foreign aid strategy towards Egypt and reining in Defense Department spending on costly and underperforming projects will likely earn him more enmity from various blocs within his party.

The Iraq War debacle and much of the Bush administration’s counter-terror policies led Americans to realize that Republicans were selling junk national security policy. Yet at the same time, the neocon stranglehold on the GOP remains alive and well (a sticking point Mitt Romney was faced with during last year’s presidential election).

Since the election, the Party’s soul-searching on foreign policy has broken into the public as struggles for the future of the party on foreign affairs have been frequent. Various sides have been loosely led by Paul, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and McCain and none seems ready to yield. And at present, it appears that the fight can only be overcome by adhering to a very slim set of neocon-esque foreign policy principles, or, as Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel discovered during his nomination battle, face accusations of apostasy and risk internal isolation.

So far, McCain is fine with having the debate, but appears to be wondering whether there is room for his views in the GOP. “Right now the far left and far right in America are coming together in favor of pulling us back from the world,” McCain warned at CNAS. “The President and I have had our differences, many of those differences will persist. But there are times these days when I feel I have more in common on foreign policy with President Obama than I do with some in my own party.”

By Ken Sofer

Amid the continuing political turmoil in Egypt, which left over 50 dead in Port Said in the past week, several members of Congress are threatening to block the $1.5 billion U.S. economic and military assistance to the government in Cairo. Roughly $450 million in promised economic support for Egypt is already on hold in Congress, despite White House efforts to get the money released.

While Egypt’s progress under President Muhammad Morsi towards an open, democratic state has been frustrating and often ineptly managed, the United States needs to remain engaged in efforts to influence the political and economic transition in Egypt, as well as bolster security in one of our most important allies. Both actions will require continued support for a full range of U.S. policy tools — including the annual security and economic assistance the U.S. has delivered since 1979 — and a more robust diplomatic engagement with the multiple centers of power that have emerged in Egypt during the past two years.

U.S. assistance and support for Egypt must be reformed in the long run to reflect new realities, but ending aid to Egypt is a blunt tool that should be reserved for red lines in the relationship, such as a coup d’état, a sharp authoritarian turn, or Egypt reneging on its treaty obligations with Israel. As incoming Secretary of State John Kerry recently stressed, now is not the time to rashly cut off support to Egypt. Clearly, Egypt’s people and leaders will determine its trajectory, but the United States can play a positive role in shaping outcomes.

Congress should release American aid to Egypt to help stabilize the country’s intertwined political, economic and security crises. Egypt remains in the very early stages of what will likely be a protracted period of change. With so much uncertainty and change in the broader region, the United States must continue to invest in building a stronger foundation for an ongoing, mutually beneficial partnership with Egypt as it makes its long, slow march towards true democracy.

For more on the current clashes in Egypt and U.S. options, see “Advancing U.S. Interests and Values at a Time of Change in Egypt” by Brian Katulis, Peter Juul, and Ken Sofer.

In a Columbus Day speech to the Virginia Military Institute, Governor Mitt Romney backed away from his controversial position of requiring foreign assistance to be “zeroed out” each year. The speech, billed as a “major foreign policy address” as the Romney campaign seeks to highlight the candidate’s policy positions in the run-up to the election, contained little new in terms of specifics.

One area that Romney did differ from previous statements was his position on the United States’ delivery of foreign aid to allies abroad. In today’s speech, Romney spoke on the continuing need to provide assistance to governments in the Middle East, along with conditions that recipients had to follow:

I will rally our friends and allies to match our generosity with theirs. And I will make it clear to the recipients of our aid that, in return for our material support, they must meet the responsibilities of every decent modern government-to respect the rights of all of their citizens, including women and minorities… to ensure space for civil society, a free media, political parties, and an independent judiciary… and to abide by their international commitments to protect our diplomats and our property.

This differs from Romney’s statements during the Republican primary campaign. At a debate in South Carolina in November 2011, Romney latched onto a proposal from Texas Governor Rick Perry highlighting foreign aid as a potential area for cutting spending. At the time, Romney said “[O]ne of the things we have to do with our foreign aid commitments, the ongoing foreign aid commitments, I agree with Governor Perry. You start everything at zero.”

Currently, the foreign aid budget makes up about one percent of the Federal budget. Former Romney campaign national co-chair Tim Pawlenty has previously criticized Governor Romney for the position, calling it “directionally not correct.”

TAMPA, Florida — Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R), a top surrogate for Mitt Romney, laid into those in the Republican Party who wanted to get rid of foreign aid funding, calling the idea “directionally not correct.”

The only problem? At a Republican primary debate in November last year, Romney joined the call for eliminating U.S. foreign aid commitments. “[O]ne of the things we have to do with our foreign aid commitments, the ongoing foreign aid commitments, I agree with Governor Perry,” said Romney. “You start everything at zero.”

Speaking at The Tampa Club with Bill Kristol, Pawlenty criticized the “isolationist wing” of his party that is “very hostile towards foreign aid and development monies.” Noting the modest amount that America actually spends on foreign aid — it makes up less than one percent of the federal budget — Pawlenty broke with his party’s presidential candidate, calling it “important to preserve and maintain that commitment.”

PAWLENTY: First of all, my party has a wing or a portion of it that is trending towards isolationism and is trending towards being very hostile towards foreign aid and development monies. I think my personal view of that is that is directionally not correct. For the modest amount of money that is on the table — doesn’t mean it can’t be reformed and we can’t scrutinize it — but for the modest amount of money we’re talking about and the important role that it plays in terms of America’s position and role in the world, I think it’s important to preserve and maintain that commitment.

Watch it:

Others in the Republican Party are also pushing back against the call to eliminate foreign aid as well. In a speech earlier this year, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) ridiculed the proposition, calling it “outrightly foolish” and “un-Christian.”