Danilovich Heads to the Hill: Questions I'd Like to Hear Answers To

On Tuesday, John Danilovich faces the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs to defend the President's FY2008 $3 billion request for the Millennium Challenge Account. Budget requests for the past two years have been halved by a Congress that saw low disbursement rates as justification for poaching. This year, Congress will unfortunately be facing a similar situation...save for one major difference: a decision to cut funding could jeapordize the core credibility of the program itself. The MCC has ironed out many of the kinks associated with a slow start-up; countries, finally understanding the MCA is not a business-as-usual aid program, have worked very hard to propose locally-owned development programs. This is the year to give the MCA a fighting chance, to reward well the select group of countries deserving resources, while at the same time, demanding better communications from the MCC on the lessons learned and results of implementation to date.
I'd love to hear the following questions answered on Tuesday:
1. Implementation has been slow for the first few compacts -- an average of five months passes between signing and entry into force, and actual disbursements are less than half of what was projected for the first year. What are the three biggest lessons you have learned about the challenges of getting programs off the ground? How much of that delay is due to staying true to the country-ownership principle that distinguishes the MCA from other aid programs? How much is due to insitutional and staffing issues internal to the MCC?
2. Even assuming the MCC receives its full FY08 request, it still faces a situation of a lot of countries vying for a limited amount of resources. It seems that right now the MCC uses a business model that focuses on getting countries to the signing stage and it is unclear whether that business model is sustainable through the implemention stage. Have you given any thought to enforcing greater selectivity at the country selection stage to shift more attention to implementation and result-delivery issues? Do you have the right number and right skills set of staff to meet the demands of implementation?
3. The MCC has moved to larger compacts over the years. Is bigger necessarily better? How would the the ability to sign concurrent and/or longer-term compacts with countries change your current operating mode?
4. From the beginning, the administration described MCA as representing U.S. aid above and beyond existing development assistance. But when one looks closely at the administration’s budget increases, this promise is fulfilled at the global level but not necessarily at the country level. The FY08 foreign aid budget proposes cuts in traditional development assistance accounts (DA, CSH, ESF) in all MCA countries that also have USAID programs (9 of the 11 MCA compact countries). And the "economic growth" component of the FY08 foreign aid budget is cut by 16%. How did you coordinate with Randall Tobias in the "foreign aid reform" exercise? What is your take on the additionality of MCA assistance?
5. There are many in the NGO community who think that the MCC is too growth-focused; that it pursues a trickle-down approach to development that assumes that the poor will automatically benefit from macroeconomic growth. What exactly is the MCC's focus and what diagnostic tools does it use to assess whether the growth gains it anticipates from its programs benefit the poor? Does the MCC work with countries to assess the poverty-impact of the geographic areas it invests in -- e.g., does it target the "poorest of the poor" or what some people call "poor with potential"?
6. The threshold program provides assistance to countries that are close to passing the indicators test in the hopes of raising failed scores. Most of the programs appear to be stand-alone anti-corruption programs that might be useful in and of themselves, but seem unlikely to make the difference on a country's corruption indicator. Have any of the threshold programs actually made the difference between a failed and passing score?
7. Tell me the 3 things you are most proud of achieving since assuming the helm of the MCC.
What would you like to hear asked?