By now, President Bush’s signature foreign aid program was supposed to be delivering $5 billion a year to developing countries that show signs of moving toward democracy, free markets and good governance.

Instead, the Millennium Challenge Corporation would receive $1.8 billion in the House version of the foreign aid spending bill for the coming year, which the Democratic majority is ready to put on the House floor for debate as soon as this week.

Originally touted as a revolutionary new mechanism for disbursing aid in the post-Sept. 11 world, the Millennium Challenge has been on a leaner-than-expected financial diet since its creation three years ago. And in some respects, the program’s administrators have only themselves to blame. They have been slow to distribute funding, giving out more than $83 million of the approximately $6 billion appropriated so far. (Though they also say they have $3 billion obligated, pending benchmark-certification in recipient nations.)

But insiders familiar with the program say it has fared badly in Washington turf wars. Other agencies and traditional development organizations have blocked their path, believing they stand to lose when the Millennium Challenge gains.

All of which leaves the agency facing an uncertain future after Bush leaves office. “I think the MCC is going to have to prove very quickly some good results to get support,” says Jennifer Cooke, who co-directs the Africa program at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Millennium Challenge CEO, John Danilovich, says his agency has already achieved some major success. To make themselves eligible for MCC dollars, Danilovich notes, officials in Lesotho lifted a ban on women owning property. After the former Soviet republic of Georgia began receiving MCC grants, it fired 15,000 police officers as part of its effort to root out corruption.

Appropriators, though, say such returns are minimal. Danilovich’s predecessor, Paul Applegarth, resigned in 2005 amid a chorus of complaints about a clogged funding spigot. Most observers now agree Danilovich has sped the pace of aid distribution — although perhaps not enough.

Then there are the rival aid agencies. Millennium Challenge was supposed to award aid to countries as a supplement to their grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. ButNita M. Lowey, the New York Democrat who chairs the House subcommittee on foreign aid spending, contends that the opposite has occurred, that countries getting MCC money have seen their USAID grants curtailed. The Congressional Research Service recently reported that that has largely been the case in this fiscal year.

And the diminished stature of USAID has created a further ripple effect. Some non-governmental organizations and contractors that operate under traditional models of development funding have begun to feel frozen out of the process — because, under the MCC rules, countries are permitted to create their own plans for the aid they get.

Still, most everyone interested in foreign aid backs the concept of tying aid to progress. For her part, Lowey says she’s open to spending a bit more than what’s now in her bill. And Danilovich says his agency can use all the resources it gets. “If our coffers are dry in fiscal 2008, we’re going to lose our credibility for all these reforms countries have undertaken.”