Financial Transparency Coalition

The Energy Security Through Transparency (ESTT) Act takes important steps towards reversing the resource curse by revealing payments made here and abroad to governments for oil, gas and minerals. The resource curse describes a phenomenon in which countries with rich natural resource endowments often end up with high rates of poverty, corruption, conflict, and poor governance rather than prosperity. Good governance in extractive industries contribute to a better domestic investment climate for U.S. businesses, increase the reliability of commodity supplies, promote greater U.S. energy security and thereby strengthen our national security.

US Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) wrote a good op-ed for the Center for Global Development's blog where he discusses the need to improve USAID. From the piece:

As a result of USAID’s diminished strength, foreign assistance programs have diffused throughout some two dozen other agencies and government departments, including the Pentagon, and USAID directly manages less than half our foreign assistance spending. Each of these agencies naturally considers itself the lead agency in its sector, provoking competition among agencies rather than coordination and coherence. We don’t really know whether these programs are...