Foreign Affairs committee  We don't have an assistance relationship with China, but we do with a number of the BRICs. What we have done is work with India and Brazil, in particular, to try to help them with development assistance and to have them partner with us to do it in ways we think fit our values and

Foreign Affairs committee  We've done it with India, on food security in Africa, and we've done it with Brazil on chicken farmers in Mozambique. What we're trying to do is take the people who are transitioning from patronage to partnership, as Secretary Clinton would say, and partner with them in a way tha

Foreign Affairs committee  What President Obama said is let us imagine when aid is no longer needed. I'll give you a specific example. One of the very first countries AID ever operated in was South Korea. South Korea had a lower per capita income than any of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and now i

Foreign Affairs committee  This is a good addition or complement to what we were talking about. We are huge believers in one of the values that official development assistance—and probably only official development assistance—can do; that is, to help strengthen the enabling environment for businesses to gr

Foreign Affairs committee  The Peace Corps.

Foreign Affairs committee  Both the Peace Corps and USAID have experimented with that. You don't have to be 21 to enter the Peace Corps; you could be 55 or 60 and enter the Peace Corps with your specialized expertise. When the Berlin Wall fell, AID stood up 22 missions in eastern Europe. One of the Supre

Foreign Affairs committee  I would hate to substitute my judgment for theirs, but I would say that every five years a group of OECD countries comes in to evaluate our development assistance program. This past year, as part of that, they rated and evaluated our public-private partnerships and said they were

Foreign Affairs committee  In addition to the fact that there has to be a development outcome we share and a path to long-term sustainability without continued USG support, we also worry about reputational risk. We ask whether our entering this partnership would risk damaging the U.S. government's reputati

Foreign Affairs committee  I don't know. It is more common that in the initial inquiry they are much further away from an acceptable project for us, so we are completely honest about that. I would say that a third of the time, particularly if they are brand-new companies that have never done business with

Foreign Affairs committee  No, that isn't the case. It really is to see where the business goals overlap with our development goals. We lead with our development goals and we negotiate hard on behalf of our development goals. We're looking for that intersection where their needs and opportunities overlap w

Foreign Affairs committee  We do extensive due diligence on each of our partners. We make a judgment call on whether there are any black spots on their record, whether they're significant enough that we want to walk away from a deal, or whether we see a change in management and the way they are going forwa

Foreign Affairs committee  We generally have conversations. We don't substitute our judgment for them, but we generally reach out to them and listen hard about what's important to them in that process.

Foreign Affairs committee  They really have to overlap, because if they're out of whack, then it doesn't work over the long term. We're interested in a partnership that stays together and produces what we think will be a multiple of benefits. If a tremendous amount of benefits accrue to the private sector

Foreign Affairs committee  I have.

Foreign Affairs committee  I hear you're quite polite.