Last night, the Senate approved the FY08 Omnibus spending bill with $34.31 billion in base funding for the International Affairs budget. The House-approved $1.54 billion for the Millennium Challenge Account stayed in tact through the Senate approval process.
Today we got our first look at the results of Senate and House Appropriators' weekend wrestling with the FY08 Omnibus Appropriations bill, comprising the remaining 11 appropriations bills, including State-Foreign Operations. In an effort to meet the president’s demand that aggregate discretionary spending be held to his request of $933 billion, the current Omnibus slashed an additional 4% from the Foreign Operations discretionary spending level earlier passed by both chambers to arrive at $32.8 billion.
Yesterday, the Millennium Challenge Corporation Board of Directors decided which countries to add to -- and if you look closely, which countries to withdraw from -- the list of those eligible for funding. For Compact program eligibility, the Board chose one new country -- Malawi -- to add, and it looks like The Gambia, Cape Verde and Sri Lanka were quietly removed.
On November 30, the MCC signed a $35.6 million Threshold Program with Peru to combat corruption and improve immunization. Peru becomes the 18th country to sign a Threshold Program with the MCC, bringing the total amount committed to the Program to about $400 million.
Friday's front page of the New York Times ran a terrific article by Celia Dugger on the Millennium Challenge Account. Unfortunately, the headline reinforces the excuse that Congress is using to cut the MCA's budget -- that it can't spend the money it already has.
I just posted a short analysis of the current state of play of the MCA account funding in the FY08 International Affairs budget and the impact of various funding and policy differences, including the amendment introduced by Senator Lugar to change the MCA’s compact funding obligations policy, on the MCA and the countries working hard to make the grade.
Moments ago, the MCC posted the FY2008 country scorecards that show how all candidate countries performed on the 17 policy indicators used to determine which countries will be selected to apply for FY2008 funding. The MCC Board will meet on December 12 to select that set of countries.
On November 9, the MCC signed a $8.6 million Threshold Program with Sao Tome focused on improving its fiscal policy and business start-up indicators. Unlike most Threshold Programs where implementation is overseen by USAID, this one will be overseen by the U.S. Treasury Department.
The MCC has now signed a total of 17 Threshold Programs for a total of $360 million.
The date of the Millennium Challenge Corporation Board meeting to decide on FY08 country eligibility has been set for December 12. In the next couple of weeks, we will be releasing our annual report on which countries we predict will be selected and what issues the MCC will need to pay attention to going forward.
On October 26, just 5 days before it was scheduled to sign a $20 million Threshold Program agreement with Yemen, the Millennium Challenge Corporation decided to hold off while it "undertakes a review to determine the country’s future status with MCC." Personally, I think it is the right outcome (see my earlier blogs).