In addition to boosting exchange funding by $44 million in FY 2005, the omnibus funding package approved by the House and Senate on Saturday includes provisions that affect the Exchange Visitor Program, encourages establishment of new work exchange programs with Australia, Canada and New Zealand, and addresses U.S. visa policy and process.

In a Saturday post-election, lame-duck session of Congress, both House and Senate chambers voted to increase exchanges funding by $44 million to $360.750 million for fiscal year (FY) 2005. The exchanges funding was included in a $388.4 billion omnibus discretionary spending package to fund the nine federal government agencies that have been operating under a continuing resolution since the beginning of the fiscal year on October 1, 2004.

The Alliance this fall completed its second trip to visit consular posts in Europe to discuss visa processing. We visited the following posts: Dublin, Riga, Kiev, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Minsk, and Krakow, where consular staff from Warsaw also participated in the meetings.

Noting that Congress is “doing the unthinkable – downsizing the President’s foreign policy budget request at a time of our greatest diplomatic crisis in decades”, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-IN) said yesterday that the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) will have a hard time as it competes for scarce funds in seeking to fulfill its ambitious vision over the next six to 12 months. His comments were made at a hearing to assess the progress of the MCC program.