All But Certain: No Quorum for December MCC Board Meeting

Update: The MCC board meeting has been postponed until January 2011.As we have reported before, the Millennium Challenge Corporation is required to have one of four public board members in place to constitute a quorum and make decisions. Today’s tally: zero. And it’s looking almost impossible that that number will change in time for the December 15th MCC board meeting.After some delay, Alan Patricof and Mark Green were nominated for two of the board positions. They are awaiting approval, first by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) and then by the full Senate. The kicker? The SFRC was supposed to meet today, but just postponed the meeting again until December 14^th at 2:15. Assuming the SFRC moves the nominations out of committee there is no way (barring a monumental push or midnight session) that the full Senate would approve them in time for the 9 a.m. MCC board meeting the following day.Unless something magical occurs, the MCC board will not have a quorum on December 15^th. They can still meet—and I suspect they will—but they cannot make important decisions, including the annual selection of MCC countries eligible for assistance. We conducted our own annual predictions of who the board might select for FY2011 assistance at the December board meeting. We should have predicted that they wouldn’t be able to pick any countries. Ouch.