Foreign Service Journal

A F S A N E W S

Legislative Report

In 2008, AFSA continued to be a strong, trusted and respected voice on Capitol Hill as we advocated on a variety of issues of importance to the Foreign Service community.

The Overseas Pay Gap

AFSA was consistently aggressive in working toward getting Congress to correct the overseas pay gap in 2008. Despite the great odds of moving anything forward in the late days of the 110th Congress, we have successes to highlight.

AFSA brokered a bipartisan agreement in the House Foreign Affairs Committee that resulted in the passage of a bill to solve the problem, in addition to raising the death gratuity benefit for Foreign Service personnel killed overseas. In the House, we had direct discussions with key leaders at critical junctures. We built up House co-sponsors on the bill, going office-to-office and relying on our members to capitalize on trips that members of Congress and staff took overseas. Never before had the HFAC passed a bill solely focused on correcting the pay problem, an indication of our success in elevating the discussion of this acute problem in Congress.

In the Senate, we convinced key senators to offer a companion bill to the House version. These efforts, coupled with our close relationships with key members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, allowed us to get the bill passed out of the SFRC. By the close of 2008, in the last days of the congressional session, we were in a good position for passage; but, unfortunately, certain senators exercised a procedural right to block the Senate pay gap bill over cost concerns and disagreement over the importance of fixing the problem. We waged a final aggressive push that consisted of mobilizing scores of constituent calls to the blocking senators, but they were not willing to relinquish their holds on the bill, and that ended our chances.

Despite this disappointment, AFSA is

OFFICE OF CHARLES RANGEL

Pictured left to right: AFSA Legislative Director Ian Houston, AFSA President John Naland, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N. Y., AFSA State VP Steve Kashkett and State Governing Board Representative Daphne Titus.

proud of the strategic and focused leadership that enabled us to get as far as we did.

Funding for Diplomacy and Staffing

AFSA has consistently focused on the vital need to augment the Foreign Service ranks and find creative solutions to funding that increase in personnel. AFSA was very effective in 2008 in our efforts to advance this priority. We made convincing arguments that the Foreign Service was critically underfunded and that a lack of appropriated funds over the last several years had resulted in a fiscal emergency. We secured key meetings early in the process and made specific suggestions to senior congressional appropriators and their staffs.

As a result of that direct advocacy, $25 million for staffing and training was locked into the president’s Fiscal Year 2008 supplemental spending request for Iraq and Afghanistan. We then shifted to ensuring that the president’s call for a significant increase in Foreign Service positions in the Fiscal Year 2009 budget request was funded.

We made substantive contributions in 2008 to the American Academy of Diplomacy and Henry L. Stimson Center landmark study, which detailed specifically what human and financial resources the State Department, the Foreign Service and USAID need to accomplish their missions. We then helped bring these arguments to Congress. The specific appropriations bill that was to fund these addi-

tional positions and provide greater resources was, unfortunately, not completed by Congress in 2008, but we are hopeful that our efforts will bear fruit when the new 111th Session wraps up the pending budget process in 2009. In engaging on these fronts, we have advanced our broader goal of bringing to our fellow citizens a greater awareness, knowledge and respect for what the Foreign Service does.

Other Legislative Fronts

AFSA also engaged on issues of critical importance to USAID. Particular areas of focusin2008includedadvocatingforagency operating expenses and increased staffing, and strongly expressing our concerns about the pitfalls related to mid-level Foreign Service hiring at USAID and how this well-intentioned initiative potentially undermines the career Foreign Service.

We also forged partnerships with outside organizations and humanitarian and development nongovernmental organizations in an effort to raise our profile in this community. And we offered key insights as the debate on foreign assistance reform heated up.

AFSA tackled many other priority issues during the year, such as retirement benefits, maternity leave questions for federal employees, tax issues specifically affecting civilians working overseas and serving in combat zones, and ambassadorships for political appointees.