MIAMI (By Andres Oppenheimer, Miami Herald) February 11, 2006 — At a time when many Latin American countries are shifting to the left and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is promising significant aid to his neighbors, the Bush administration is proposing major cuts in foreign aid to the region.

The administration's fiscal year 2007 request to Congress includes a 28.5 percent cut in development assistance for Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the figures issued by the White House earlier this week.

''I wish I could say I was shocked, but this is the third year in a row that the president slashed the core development funding for Latin America and the Caribbean,'' said Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., who says he will push to reverse some of the budget cuts. "I'm dismayed, however, because this year's cuts are even higher.''

The reductions include $15 million in cuts to El Salvador, from $22.5 million this year to $7.5 million next year, and a drop of $7.8 million to Nicaragua, from $20.8 million to just under $13 million. Support for the 34-country Organization of American States is cut by $7 million, from $64 million to $57 million.

Budget Constraints

Bush administration officials say that in the context of a budget request in which 144 domestic programs were significantly reduced or eliminated, funding for Latin America didn't fare badly.

''We need to see Latin America in relation to the entire budget,'' said Adolfo Franco, the top official for Latin American and Caribbean affairs at the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. government department in charge of foreign aid. "If you look at it that way, we are doing quite well.''

Franco said that while Latin America and the Caribbean accounted for 11.2 percent of USAID's budget for 2006, the Bush administration's request for 2007 would only reduce it to 10.3 percent. ''We're talking about less than 1 percent of our budget for the region,'' he added.

Asked why the administration's budget request contains a significant increase for Africa in some aid categories, U.S. officials said it's because of President Bush's commitment to help fight malaria on that continent, and because of his pledge to double U.S. aid to Africa over the next five years.

Latin America experts say that U.S. aid to Latin America and the Caribbean has declined steadily since the 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States, when the Bush administration began to focus its resources on the war against terrorism.

''The budget reflects the changing U.S. priorities, away from Latin America,'' says Manuel Rocha, a former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, who also served in Argentina, Cuba and Mexico. "U.S. funding is going to areas of strategic concern, like the Middle East.''

The region also gets other assistance from the United States, including military aid, which the administration proposes cutting next year.

Some members of Congress, including some leading Republicans, say reducing U.S. foreign aid at a time when leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is offering massive assistance to its neighbors may further erode Washington's influence in the region.

The latest U.S. political setback in Latin America was the recent election of Bolivian President Evo Morales, a leftist coca growers' leader who during his campaign vowed to become ''a nightmare'' for the United States.

Asking for More

Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., chairman of the Senate subcommittee on Western Hemisphere affairs, said Wednesday that he will lobby to revise the figures upward.

''I intend to raise with my colleagues my concerns about adequate foreign-aid funds for Latin America,'' Coleman said. "With the rise of anti-American sentiment and populism in the region, Latin America must remain an important part of our foreign-aid budget.''

Florida Republican Sen. Mel Martinez, who said he would work with Coleman to ensure more funding, said, "At first glance, many of the numbers dealing with foreign aid to Latin America in the president's budget are disappointing.''

Narcotics Concerns

While Democrats in Congress have traditionally supported larger U.S. foreign-aid budgets as a way to promote stability and help solve immigration and drug-trafficking problems, many Republicans are concerned about the administration's decision not to increase funding for counter-narcotics and law enforcement in Mexico and Central America.

''Though our efforts in Colombia are sustained in this budget, it is vital to not overlook Mexico and Central America, where there are governments that we can work with, but which lack resources to be more effective,'' Coleman said.

Menendez, one of the Democratic Party's leading spokesmen on Latin American affairs, said he expects Congress will succeed in increasing some portions of the administration's budget request for Latin America but not enough to make a big difference.

''We had some degree of success in restoring some of this money last year, but every year that the cuts get deeper, restoring the full amount of money gets more difficult,'' Menendez told The Miami Herald. "So we end with deeper cuts at the end of the day.''