Bush budget proposes $1.2 billion in global food aid
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration's proposed budget for fiscal 2009, released on Monday, would spend $1.226 billion on emergency international food aid programs.
The administration had proposed $1.219 billion for fiscal 2008, but it estimated total spending for 2008 at $1.561 billion, including supplemental spending, it said in its annual budget proposal.
The United States is the world's largest provider of global food aid, and is by far the top backer of the United Nations' World Food Program.
In recent years, emergency food aid from the United States has gone to countries suffering from famine or political crisis, such as Sudan, Iraq or Lebanon.
Total spending in 2007 for Food for Peace, as the main emergency food aid program is known, was $1.665 billion in fiscal 2007, the administration said.
(Editing by Matthew Lewis)
