With only four legislative days left before the end of the fiscal year, Congress is still far from a funding deal. The Alliance’s Andrea Bodine provides a primer on how international exchange programs might be impacted by a government shutdown.
Both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees have completed their subcommittee and full committee markups of their respective State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs (SFOPS) bills in recent weeks. Educational and cultural exchanges were funded at $700.95M (approx. 10% decrease) by the House bill and $779.5M (approx. 0.25% increase) by the Senate bill. See the chart below for more details and a comparison with the President’s budget request and current enacted level.
The Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24) appropriations cycle is officially in full swing with the release of the Biden Administration’s proposed budget late last week. The President’s $6.8 trillion request, while unlikely to be enacted in the current divided Congress, presents a starting point for the negotiations to come.
After weeks of counting, the majority of races in the 2022 midterms have been decided, allowing for a clearer picture of what the 118th Congress will look like come January. What follows are our thoughts on the election results and their implications for the international exchange community.