US out on a limb in the Northern Triangle?

From Claire Luke's US out on a limb in the Northern Triangle?

The specifics of a proposed $1 billion assistance plan to Central America remain in limbo as the U.S. Congress tries to determine the level of political will from the presidents of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — the countries the plan is meant to support.

Concern over the buy-in from the Central American leaders comes as Congress is assessing to what extent it will approve the plan, which in its current form would deliver a dramatic increase in aid to counteract underlying conditions that led to 2014’s unaccompanied minor crisis at the U.S. border.

Interesting takes on the "holdup" surrounding President Obama's proposed aid request for Central America. Manuel Orozco seems to believe that the plan is solely the idea of the Inter-American Development Bank. Eric Olson argues that US congressmen are hung up on devising benchmarks to actually measure political will but that they are having a difficult time doing so. The State Department, on the other hand, was few benchmarks as it does not want the assistance program to look too heavy-handed. They want the plan to be characterized as one element of a partnership between the US and the region.

This feels like the debate over certification during the 1980s in Central America. We have partners in whom we have varying levels of confidence but we don't always get to choose our partners. They need to demonstrate greater progress on human rights reform and democratization for us to provide assistance. Three thousand civilians were killed by right-wing death squads last month, only 2,000 were killed by the same people this month - see progress! Congress puts on a bit of a charade, holds their breath, and gives the money anyway. If anything goes wrong, which it ultimately will, Congress can say that the administration proved to them that our Central American partners were actually hitting the benchmarks. Blame the president, let Congress off the hook.