WP: Lawmakers Must Have More Patience with MCC

Jul 17th, 2007 7:00 PM UTC
By Alan Boswell, ONE Online Organizer

Yesterday, the Washington Post ran an editorial in support of the Millenium Challenge Corp, or MCC. The MCC initiative was announced in 2002 by President Bush and is designed to be an economic development program that ensures accountability from the recipient government. If a nation wishes to have access to the initiative’s funds, it must first meet strict standards of governance and sign a detailed contract that requires certain benchmarks to be met for each successive year of the 5 year compact. MCC is often used as an example in the development advocacy camp of an aid program which demands accountability and rewards transparent governments that seek to meet their peoples’ needs.

Unfortunately, this relatively new program is facing serious obstacles on Capitol Hill. It has very little to show for its funding-to-date, but MCC advocates point out that this is to be expected due to the program’s emphasis on conducting due diligence before awarding grants, and letting recipient country councils decide democratically what the nation’s priorities should be requires a bit more patience from lawmakers.

The Post describes the predicament:

The administration asked for $3 billion for the MCC in its fiscal 2008 budget. House appropriators have cut that to $1.8 billion, about what the MCC got last year, while Senate appropriators have gone even lower, to $1.2 billion, a figure that the MCC says will cripple its ability to make new agreements with countries that have recently qualified for its programs. One benefit of the Millennium Challenge is that it creates an incentive for poor countries to improve their practices and procedures, but that could be lost if the impression spreads that the United States is pulling the plug.

Read the full editorial.

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