Tough Road Ahead for the MCC

This week has turned out to be tough for the MCC. On Tuesday evening, House and Senate conferees approved by voice vote the FY 2006 Foreign Operations appropriations bill in the amount of $20.9 billion, nearly $2 billion less than President Bush had pushed for. Far and away the biggest loser from this affair was the MCC, which accounted for over half of the foreign ops budget reduction.The Administration had requested $3 billion for the MCA, but lawmakers, citing tight budget constraints and disgruntled by the MCC's slow performance to-date in signing compacts and spending the money, authorized only $1.77 billion for FY 2006. According to an editorial in today's NYT, entitled Where’s That Veto Threat? , "budget cutters in Congress say that until the program starts actually giving money to poor people, they're hard pressed to give it money."A smaller than originally envisioned budget was to be expected, but it is disheartening nonetheless. As discussed by CGD in a recent publication, with such tight purse-strings foisted upon the MCC, it will be increasingly difficult to fund Compact countries in accordance with MCC’s transformative aims. And with the Board meeting on Tuesday to select an ever-growing number of eligible countries, such financial constraints make it exceedingly difficult to square the circle of having less money and more qualifying countries itching to get Compact funding.The appropriations bill language regarding the MCC does have some perks. Chief among them, it calls for a report to Congress on the governance structures for indigenous civil society participation in MCC countries. It's unfortunate, however, that appropriators didn't draw more concretely from some good language in the reauthorizing bill, like:• Compact proposal timelines: which would have directly addressed Congress'' concerns about the time MCC takes from eligibility to disbursement of funds.• Allowing for concurrent and subsequent compacts in a country: rewarding those countries making significant progress by giving larger amounts of funding.The bill is expected to be approved by both the House and Senate and then sent to Bush for his signature, which may very well take place early next week.