At approx. 3 PM on July 12th, the House Appropriations Subcommittee for State, Foreign Operations Programs released their FY18 appropriations bill, which is scheduled to be marked up at 3 PM on Thursday the 13th. You can find the full bill here.
The Basic Education allocation (Page 240) remains at FY17 levels ($800 million). Funds appropriated for multilateral programs (GPE/ECW) has increased by $12.5 million ($87.5 million). Additionally, the following language that was included in May’s omnibus was removed:
Removed text: That if the USAID Administrator determines that any unobligated balances of funds specifically designated for assistance for basic education in prior Acts making appropriations for the Department of State, foreign operations, and related programs are in excess of the absorptive capacity of recipient countries, such funds may be made available for other programs authorized under chapter 1 of part I of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, notwithstanding such funding designation: Provided further, That the authority of the previous proviso shall be subject to prior consultation with, and the regular notification procedures of, the Committees on Appropriations.
Overall, the bill provides $47.4 billion in both regular discretionary and Overseas Contingency Operations funding, totaling $10 billion below FY17 enacted level, when counting the additional funding providing by the Security Assistance Appropriations Act of 2017. Some key figures include:
- State Department has received $15.4 billion in base and OCO funding, $2.6 billion below FY17 levels.
- International Security Assistance received $8.8 billion, $614 million below FY17.
- USAID received $1.5 billion, a decrease of $115 million
- Bilateral economic assistance received $22.7 billion, a decrease of $4.2 billion from FY17
The following programs were zeroed out:
- Green Climate Fund
- International Debt Relief
- UNESCO
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
We expect the full bill to be marked up the week of the 17th.