Funding for State Department educational and cultural exchange programs is included in the federal budget passed each year through Congress. Understanding the appropriations process and knowing if your member sits on the Appropriations Committee or the Appropriations State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee (which funds exchange programs) is an important tool in a successful budget request.

The appropriations process in brief

1. Each year on February 1, the President releases his budget request for the following fiscal year. This year, President Obama's FY 2011 request for exchange programs was $633.2 million, slightly below the FY 2010 amount of $635 million. [The Alliance Advocacy Day is strategically scheduled for shortly after the budget request is released so we can advocate for our "ask." This year, we will be asking for a modest increase above the President's request: $675 million. This increase of $40 million above the FY 2010 level would keep pace with the overall State Department funding increase in the FY 2011 request of 5.2 per cent.]

2. 

   After the President releases his budget request, the House and Senate Appropriations Committees report 13 individual appropriations measures to various appropriations subcommittees to be "marked up," or edited into a final version. The House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on State and Foreign Operations mark up the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations bill, which funds exchange programs. Depending on the legislative calendar, this process takes place during the late spring and/or summer. During this time, the Alliance continues its advocacy work, meeting with members of the State and Foreign Operations appropriations subcommittees to further push our "ask" for exchanges.

3. Once the 13 appropriations bills have been marked up, both the House and the Senate vote on their respective versions of the bills.
4. Once the House and Senate have both passed a particular appropriations bill, the two versions of the bill are reconciled into one bill in a joint House-Senate conference committee. Conference committees typically meet in the late summer or fall.
5. Once a final, reconciled appropriations bill is passed, it is sent to the President to sign into law. In theory, the President should sign 13 individual appropriations bills each year, which must be done by the end of the fiscal year on September 30. If Congress is unable to keep that schedule and must extend into the new fiscal year, it will pass a continuing resolution (CR) to fund government operations at the current year funding levels until the new appropriations bills are passed. If Congress does not have sufficient time to pass 13 individual appropriations bills, multiple bills may be bundled together into what is called an omnibus and passed all at once, as happened in 2010.

Further reading on the approps process

Information on the Senate and House Appropriations Committees and Subcommittees on State and Foreign Operations, including explanations on the committees’ purposes, committee members, and external links to the committee websites and other sources, are below:

Senate Committee on Appropriations

Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs

House Committee on Appropriations

House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs

Official explanation on the Congressional appropriations process from the House of Representative’s Committee on Rules:

Rules.House.Gov

Congressional Research Service report containing an overview of the appropriations process:

CRS report