1.  Greetings from AFSA President John Naland.  Here is what we are working on at AFSA headquarters.  Please send any comments to me at naland@afsa.org.

 

FOREIGN SERVICE STAFFING

 

2.  We have good news to report on Foreign Service staffing.  The Fiscal Year 2009 omnibus appropriation bill that is making is way though Congress contains funding to increase State staffing by 500 and USAID staffing by 300.  The State increase is mostly Foreign Service and is designated to start to fill existing vacancies.  The USAID increase is all Foreign Service as part of the Development Leadership Initiative.  AFSA's contacts in Congress expect this bill to pass in the next few days.

 

3.  These new positions, added to the smaller number of new positions funded by last year's Iraq-Afghanistan supplemental appropriation, constitute a good down payment towards getting Foreign Service staffing at State and USAID to a level that more closely matches our nation's goals to advance peace, stability, and economic vitality around the world.  We thank Congress for moving to fund these new positions.  At the same time, everyone should keep in mind that the blue ribbon panel report issued last October by the American Academy of Diplomacy documented the need for 2,848 additional State positions for core diplomacy and a training complement, as well as 1,250 additional USAID positions by Fiscal Year 2014.

 

4.  These initial actions to grow the Foreign Service are the result of hard work by many people on Capitol Hill, the State Department, and the Administration.  Credit also goes to others -- including the American Academy of Diplomacy, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and innumerable columnists and editorial writers - who, over the past few years, have made the case for increased funding for diplomacy and development assistance.  AFSA, of course, shares credit.  We have been very active in lobbying for additional resources and in making the public case for them.  In just the last two weeks, we submitted testimony to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations chaired by Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY).  In addition, AFSA officials were quoted on CNN, NPR, Federal News Radio, and in print (Federal Times, Government Executive, and Congressional Quarterly).
 
5.  Given that the FY09 budget will only make a dent in meeting our unmet staffing needs, AFSA welcomes the Obama Administration's recently released Fiscal Year 2010 budget request which states that it "includes funding for the first year of a multi-year effort to significantly increase the size of the Foreign Service at both the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development."  The exact numbers of new positions will likely be announced in supporting documentation that is due out in April. 

 

6.  The FY10 funding request for State and USAID will be debated in Congress this spring and summer and should be approved by September 30.  AFSA understands that Secretary Clinton is personally lobbying for these additional resources as is, of course, her management team.  AFSA will certainly do likewise.  We have also started making the case that Foreign Service staffing needs to grow in the Foreign Commercial Service at the Department of Commerce and in the Foreign Agricultural Service at the Department of Agriculture.

 

OVERSEAS PAY GAP

 

7.  Concerning the long-standing overseas pay gap suffered by junior and mid-level Foreign Service members, the good news is that funding to begin to close that gap is included in the FY09 omnibus appropriation bill (AFSA lobbied hard for that outcome).  The bad news is that we still lack authorization legislation to permit the expenditure of those funds.

 

8.  As previously reported, last year AFSA played a key role in getting the two authorizing committees (House Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee) to, on a bipartisan basis, approve bills to authorize expenditures to close the pay gap.  Those bills, however, did not make it to the floor of the Senate and House before the clock ran out on the previous Congress.  Thus, we are currently working to find a legislative vehicle to which the needed authorization can be attached.  We understand that Secretary Clinton has personally reached out to key lawmakers on this same issue.  So, please stay tuned.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
AFSANET is a free service of the American Foreign Service Association
designed to provide updates on items of interest to the foreign
affairs community. 
 
You can update your mailing address by going to our website:
<http://www.afsa.org/comment.cfm>
 
To become a member of AFSA, visit
<http://www.afsa.org/mbr/index.cfm>.
 
To subscribe or unsubscribe from this newsletter go to
<http://www.afsa.org/forms/maillist.cfm>