POLITICS & ECONOMICS: “Foreign-Aid Program May Be Hamstrung by Budget: Bush Program Faces Hit as Countries Near Large Deals,” by Michael M. Phillips, Wall Street Journal, 22 January 2007, p. A7.

The best innovation of the Bush administration in foreign policy has been the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a new foreign aid-granting entity outside of USAID that focuses on countries approaching the threshold of emerging market status. Instead of just propping up countries from below, the MCC was designed to lure them from above, creating a transparency with regard to standards. The focus of the MCC has been great: very much enabling the mechanisms by which soft infrastructure and rule sets emerge. My favorite grant (very De Soto-ish) was to Madagascar to take its antiquated land titling system and bring it into the information age (I have a special spot for Madagascar, as I did a bit of work for USAID’s Africa Bureau [no travel, alas] back in the mid-1990s, about the same time my firstborn was surviving her advanced case of cancer thanks to a drug made from a plant found only on the island [my consulting involved the preservation of nature reserves, so a nice sense of symmetry arose]). Bush wanted $5B a year (alas, Bush was a spender beyond all spenders), but Congress, as always, got stingy and has continuously trimmed it back. Our legislature should know better, but they prefer their ability to earmark the entire USAID budget to death, primarily to benefit home districts.