"Even in these tight economic times, we need to find ways to do better," Clinton told the overflowing crowd.
Clinton's confidence belied the fact that in April, Congress slashed the grant-making capacity of the State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. When the Republicans won the House last November, the office's $21.2 million annual budget to fight the war on slavery was already microscopic. At the time, it was barely equal to the U.S. government's daily budget to fight the war on drugs. For fiscal year 2012, Congress sliced away nearly a quarter of those antislavery funds, as part of its broader $8 billion State Department budget cuts.
For Mark Lagon, a former Republican staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who headed the TIP office during the Bush Administration's second term, the budget cuts are "a sign that all programs are evenly hit, even those with broad nonpartisan support." But Lagon was troubled that shoestring yet lifesaving overseas antislavery programs would feel those cuts most dearly. "We need to spend 10 times as much on fighting human trafficking and ending slavery," said Lagon, "and it would still be a bargain even at that price."
"But according to this year's report, Uzbekistan still uses slave labor to pick cotton, which then finds its way into clothes made and shipped across the world. Remarking on Uzbekistan's continued watch-list status, Lagon said, "A waiver is outrageous given the regime's refusals to allow in inspectors, and even Walmart is spurning [Uzbek cotton]."
Read the rest at time.com.
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