On December 20, 2001, Congress cleared for the President's signature a$15.35 billion Foreign Operations Appropriations for FY2002 ( H.R. 2506 ). President Bush signed the measure on January 10, 2002 ( P.L. 107-115 ). Passage of the bill broke a month-long impasse over House-Senate disagreementsconcerning international family planning and abortion issues. As enacted, H.R. 2506 drops Senate language that would have overturned thePresident's abortion restrictions on bilateral U.S. population assistance, butappropriates funding for family planning programs closer to the higher amountsrecommended by the Senate: $446.5 million for USAID activities and $34 million forthe U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA). Subsequently, the White House placed a holdon UNFPA funds while it reviews the organization's program in China. No decisionon how much, if any, of the $34 million will be released has been made. The $15.35 billion appropriation is roughly midway between levels passed earlier by the House ($15.17 billion) and the Senate ($15.52 billion), and $178million higher than requested by the President. This marks one of the few occasionswhen Congress has approved more spending for Foreign Operations than sought bythe Administration. The amount is about $400 million, or 2.7% higher than forFY2001 (excluding the $1.1 billion for Foreign Operations programs allocated fromthe terrorism emergency supplemental measure; P.L. 107-38 ). Highlights of theenacted bill include: $779 million for the Export-Import Bank, nearly $100 millionmore than requested; $475 million for HIV/AIDS, up from the $429 million proposal;and $625 million for the Andean Counternarcotics Initiative, a cut of $106 millionfrom the request. H.R. 2506 further allows the President to waiverestrictions on aid to Azerbaijan through at least December 31, 2002. Azerbaijanis one of several regional states that has offered support in the war againstterrorism. The measure also provides Armenia with $90 million in economic aid and$4.3 million in military assistance. The annual Foreign Operations appropriations bill is the primary legislativevehicle through which Congress reviews and votes on the U.S. foreign assistancebudget and influences executive branch foreign policy making generally. (1) It containsthe largest share -- about two-thirds -- of total international affairs spending by theUnited States (see Figure 1 ). The legislation funds all U.S. bilateral developmentassistance programs, managed mostly by the U.S. Agency for InternationalDevelopment (USAID), together with several smaller independent foreign aidagencies, such as the Peace Corps and the Inter-American and African DevelopmentFoundations. Most humanitarian aid activities are funded within Foreign Operations,including USAID's disaster program and the State Department's refugee reliefsupport. (2) Foreign Operations includes separateaccounts for aid programs in theformer Soviet Union (also referred to as the Independent States account) andCentral/Eastern Europe, activities that are jointly managed by USAID and the StateDepartment. Security assistance (economic and military aid) for Israel and Egypt isalso part of the Foreign Operations spending measure, as are smaller security aidprograms administered largely by the State Department, in conjunction with USAIDand the Pentagon. U.S. contributions to the World Bank and other regionalmultilateral development banks, managed by the Treasury Department, and voluntarypayments to international organizations, handled by the State Department, are alsofunded in the Foreign Operations bill. Finally, the legislation includes appropriationsfor three export promotion agencies: the Overseas Private Investment Corporation(OPIC), the Export-Import Bank, and the Trade and Development Agency. From the perspective of congressional oversight and involvement in U.S.foreign aid policymaking, the Foreign Operations bill has taken on even greatersignificance during the past 16 years. Congress has not enacted a foreign aidauthorization bill since 1985, leaving most foreign assistance programs withoutregular authorizations emanating from the legislative oversight committees. As aresult, Foreign Operations spending measures developed by the appropriationscommittees increasingly have expanded their scope beyond spending issues andplayed a major role in shaping, authorizing, and guiding both executive andcongressional foreign aid and broader foreign policy initiatives. It has been largelythrough Foreign Operations appropriations that the United States has modified aidpolicy and resource allocation priorities since the end of the Cold War. Thelegislation has also been a key tool used by Congress to apply restrictions andconditions on Administration management of foreign assistance, actions that havefrequently resulted in executive-legislative clashes over presidential prerogatives inforeign policy making. Table 1. Status of Foreign OperationsAppropriations, FY2002 President Bush submitted his FY2002 federal budget request to Congress on April 9, 2001, including funding proposals for Foreign Operations Appropriationsprograms. House and Senate Appropriations Committees are holding hearings on theproposal prior to marking up funding legislation. The House Foreign OperationsSubcommittee adopted a draft spending bill on June 27, a measure that was amendedand approved by the full Appropriations Committee on July 10. The bill -- H.R. 2506 -- was reported on July 17. The House passed H.R. 2506 on July 24 after adopting several amendments. The SenateAppropriations Committee ordered reported its FY2002 Foreign OperationsAppropriations measure on July 26, but did not file its report until September 4. TheSenate passed H.R. 2506 on October 24, adopting numerousamendments, including some addressing anti-terrorism issues. Conferees met onNovember 14 to work out differences between the two bills, but could not finalizea few issues in dispute until December 19 when a conference report was filed. TheHouse passed the conference measure on the same day (356-66), while the Senateadopted it on December 20 by voice vote. President Bush signed the legislation onJanuary 10, 2002 ( P.L. 107-115 ). Earlier, the Senate, as part of H.R. 2216 (FY2001 Supplemental Appropriations Act), voted to include $100 million for an initial U.S. contributionto a new Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and Tuberculosis. Confereesapproved the additional $100 million for the Global Fund, partially offsetting the newresources with $20 million rescissions in prior year Child Survival and ESFappropriations. Congress cleared the measure on July 20 ( P.L. 107-20 ). TheAdministration requested $200 million, $100 million of which would be drawn fromForeign Operations spending, but for FY2002, not from FY2001 as P.L. 107-20 provided. In real terms, taking into account the effects of inflation, Foreign Operationsfunding levels have fluctuated widely over the past 25 years. Some of these swings,however, are not the result of policy decisions, but due to technical budgetaccounting changes involving how Congress "scores" various programs. Forexample, the large increase in FY1981 did not represent higher funding levels, butrather the fact that export credit programs began to be counted as appropriationsrather than as "off-budget" items. Part of the substantial rise in spending in FY1985came as a result of the requirement to appropriate the full amount of military aidloans rather than only a partial appropriation required in the past. Beginning inFY1992, Congress changed how all Federal credit programs are "scored" inappropriation bills which further altered the scoring of foreign aid loans funded inForeign Operations. All of these factors make it very difficult to present a precise and consistent data trend line in Foreign Operations funding levels. Nevertheless, the data shown inFigure 2 can be regarded as illustrative of general trends in Congressional decisionsregarding Foreign Operations appropriations over the past 25 years. After peaking at nearly $33 billion in FY1985 (constant FY2002 dollars), Foreign Operations appropriations began a period of decline to $13.6 billion inFY1997, with only a brief period of higher amounts in the early 1990s due to specialsupplementals for Panama and Nicaragua (1990), countries affected by the Gulf War(1991), and the former Soviet states (1993). Table 2. Foreign Operations Appropriations, FY1995 to FY2002 (discretionary budget authority in billionsof current dollars ) * FY1999 excludes $17.861 billion for the IMF. FY2001 and FY2002 exclude $5 million and $1.188 billion, respectively, allocated from the terrorism emergencysupplemental appropriation ( P.L. 107-38 ) for Foreign Operations programs. With a much smaller supplemental ($80 million for the Global Health Fund) enacted for FY2001, Foreign Operations fell to $15.4 billion, in real terms. The FY2002 enacted amount is $15.35 billion, slightly less than FY2001, calculated usingconstant FY2002 dollars. Table 2, above, presents the enacted Foreign Operationsfunding levels for recent years, expressed in nominal, or current dollars that does nottake into account the effects of inflation. Examined in nominal terms, the FY2002amount represents a 2.7% increase over FY2001. As a share of the entire $1.9 trillion U.S. budget for FY2001, Foreign Operations represented a 0.79% share. As a portion of discretionary budget authority-- that part of the budget provided in annual appropriation acts (other thanappropriated entitlements) -- Foreign Operations consumed 2.3%. By comparison,at the high point of Foreign Operations spending in FY1985, foreign aid fundsrepresented 2% of the total U.S. budget and 4.6% of discretionary budget authority.