Arias on Mérida

Costa Rican President Óscar Arias writes about the Mérida Initiative in today's Washington Post: 

The Merida Initiative is stingy by any standard but especially by U.S. standards. Central America, Haiti and the Dominican Republic are allocated only $65 million -- one-sixth the amount that legislators initially deemed necessary. Mexico receives $400 million a year, a comparatively princely sum but the same amount that the United States spends in Iraq in a single day.

It's kind of ironic that the leader of Costa Rica, the safest of any of the nations receiving Mérida money, would makes this point, but it's hard to dispute.