Section 508 of the decades-old Foreign Assistance Act stipulates:
"None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available pursuant to this Act shall be obligated or expended to finance directly any assistance to any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree: Provided, That assistance may be resumed to such country if the President determines and reports to the Committees on Appropriations that subsequent to the termination of assistance a democratically elected government has taken office."
I've been following what has happened in Egypt and it's clear to me that Egypt's military removed the 1st ever democratically elected Egyptian President. With this, I'm hopeful that our annual Egyptian aid of $1,500,000,0000 per year might be withheld until such time as a new democratically elected government is in place.
However, I'm worried that the Obama administration will once again selectively pick and choose which laws to enforce. The law is clear, military take over = loss of aid. Before you argue cutting aid will hurt innocent Egyptians, please understand that over 85% of our annual aid goes directly to the military and I don't know about you but does that really makes sense?
