WASHINGTON -- President Bush's signature foreign-assistance program is likely to run out of money this year, leaving in the lurch several poor countries that have labored to meet its strict eligibility standards, according to aid officials.
Mr. Bush introduced the Millennium Challenge program in 2002 as a new approach to fix the perceived failures of overseas-development assistance.
The grants would be large enough to transform the recipient nations' economic fortunes, he said then, and the money would go only to countries that met quantitative standards for honest government, free-market policies and generous social spending.
Now the program's budget is expected to fall short of its projected needs by $400 million to $1 billion, depending on the outcome of congressional negotiations over the coming weeks. The crunch comes at a time when Morocco, Tanzania, Mozambique and several other developing nations are nearing agreements on huge aid packages.