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Dear Board of Directors:

It’s FY19 Budget Day + FY18 Key Decision Day. Oh My!

1. FY19 Budget – As expected, the Administration’s Budget for International Affairs will include a 30% cut – deep and disproportional.

* The biggest surprise – and concern – is that they zero out OCO for non-defense in their request for the first time in eight years.
* While the budget itself will be “dead on arrival”, expect the House to follow suit on “OCO” – causing us a problem all year long.

2. Our Game Plan – Our Military voices are speaking out loud and clear.

* Yesterday, we released the most powerful letter ever – with 150+ three and four-star Generals and Admirals.
* Today we’ve just released a letter with 1,200+ veterans from all 50 states and every branch of the military.
* We’ve got press conference call this afternoon with key military leaders and we’re pushing many of them for bookings on cable shows.
* Here’s the Veterans Letter, the Generals/Military Letter, and our Press Release.

3. Our Analysis – The FY19 budget is embargoed until noon today. Later this afternoon, we will send out our full analysis of what is in the Administration’s request.

* While it is certainly a “Groundhog Budget” when it comes to our issues, it is important to understand their priorities and what we are up against.
* Make sure to skim “The Takeaways” section.

4. FY18 Mess – Tomorrow is “D Day” for us when Leadership & Appropriators will likely determine the infamous “302(b) allocations” – funding levels for each Appropriations bill. Given the $8.8 billion deficit from OCO agreed upon in the budget deal, the International Affairs Budget begins with 15% less than last year before any allocations are even made.

* We are mobilizing! We had a powerful launch last Friday with 100 coalition partners (Thank you Dan, Sarah, Bill, Bob, Peter, Ann, Anne Marie, Jessica, and Eric for joining us.)
* Goal is to get as many quality contacts into Leadership, Appropriation Leadership, and Champions (asking them to contact their peers).

5. Deepening Administration Challenges – Confidentially, I had an opportunity to join a group of people in a private meeting with Marc Short recently – the head of White House Legislative Affairs. He is very effective.

* His answer to my question about our issue was rather disturbing.
* His immediate reaction hearing “overseas” was to talk about the deficit – America has a trillion dollar deficit and we have to set priorities – in essence, that overseas programs aren’t priorities.
* As today’s Washington Post reports, Trump’s own budget shows the Administration no longer has political concerns over the deficit and is largely responsible for the rising deficit.
* Yet, when “overseas programs” are raised, the deficit is why we can’t invest?

So a big day today – to do everything we can to influence the FY18 decisions that will be made tomorrow, while getting our military voices amplified to shape the debate on Capitol Hill in FY19.

Watch for the analysis later today and we will circulate press clips covering the military story.

More soon.

Liz
Liz Schrayer, USGLC