[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 16 (Tuesday, February 15, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1362-S1363]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             TSUNAMI ASSISTANCE--NEW MODEL FOR DEVELOPMENT

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, pursuant to that consent, I would like to 
be recognized to speak to an issue which the whole world has focused on 
over the last several weeks and months. Within a few weeks, the Senate 
is likely to vote to send hundreds of millions

[[Page S1363]]

of dollars in assistance to the nations that were devastated by the 
tsunami on December 26. We have seen the videotapes. We cannot forget 
them. Within a matter of minutes on that terrible day, whole families 
and villages were swept to sea. Schools, clinics, and hospitals were 
destroyed. Coastal cities were eliminated. What infrastructure there 
was in place was wiped out.
  We are doing the right thing to come to the assistance of the victims 
of this disaster, one of the 10 most devastating natural disasters in 
recent history, but we should not overlook the fact there are many 
other challenges in this world. Millions have died in the Congo and the 
Sudan. Hundreds of thousands are still at risk. Preventable, treatable 
diseases kill millions more every year. Someone dies of AIDS every 10 
seconds in this world. Someone new is infected every 6 seconds. Poverty 
kills. Bad water, hunger, poor sanitation kills; they are the weapons 
of economic injustice and economic disparity.
  Nelson Mandela said recently:

       Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is 
     man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions 
     of human beings.

  Overcoming poverty is not just a gesture of charity; it is an act of 
justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right 
to dignity and a decent life. Our attention now focuses on the Indian 
Ocean, as it should. But let's not overlook the suffering in the world.
  A number of years ago I went to Bangladesh. I went there to look at 
food programs. In the course of my visit, I met one of the most 
extraordinary people I ever had the pleasure to meet. His name was 
Muhammad Yunus. Muhammad Yunus, not that long ago in 1976, was an 
economics professor. Having taken a few economic courses--I remembered 
my professors--he would have blended in with the faculty of most 
universities.
  He had an idea. It was an idea that was borne out of human 
experience. It involves basic economics. Dr. Yunus thought for a 
moment, what if we gave the poorest people on Earth a small sum of 
money, what would they do with it? Would they pay it back? They were 
two very basic questions. The issue came up because he saw in many of 
the poorest villages of Bangladesh people who were being exploited by 
those who would lend them money and charge them outrageous interest 
rates. He started something called Grameen Bank, which means the 
people's bank in their local language in 1976. The concept behind it 
was to give a very small loan to people who were very poor.
  Now, 29 years later, as I stand in the Senate, Dr. Yunus's theory of 
microcredit and the Grameen Bank grew from a class project to a world-
wide phenomenon. Today, there are 80 million families in the world who 
are benefiting from Dr. Yunus's concept of microcredit. We estimate 
some 400 million people will benefit; 98 percent of them are 
women. These are people who are part of a quiet revolution. I have seen 
it firsthand. Their lives have been transformed. They have enough money 
to feed their children, to buy basic tools, maybe to buy a goat for 
milk, perhaps to buy a sewing machine--basic things that transform 
their lives.

  They pay the money back. They pay it back so others in the village 
can borrow money, as well. The average loan for many of Dr. Yunus's 
clients in Bangladesh is $9. With $9, many people go from being a 
beggar to a businessperson. He actually decided that because Bangladesh 
did not have a telephone system that he would buy cell phones and he 
would loan money to people so they could purchase them. Go to the 
remote villages and there sit 10 women holding a cell phone. With these 
cell phones, they go to their villages, they sell them minutes on the 
phone, and they make a living. They are the Grameen Telephone Company, 
the telephone women who borrowed enough money to buy a cell phone and 
now make a living with that cell phone. Incidentally, they charge their 
cell phones with a solar-powered generator. They are thinking ahead. 
This type of thing is happening all over the world.
  The reason I raise it is because when Dr. Yunus came to see me 2 
weeks ago here in Washington we talked about the tsunami. He said there 
is so much that needs to be done there. They need to rebuild 
communities. They need to rebuild lives, but do not overlook the fact 
that the ocean, as it came in, swept away the schools and the teachers 
with it. Now the surviving children who are there are in camps trying 
to survive instead of thinking about thriving, going to school and 
giving back.
  Dr. Yunus said to me, this man who comes up with amazing, simple 
ideas: Senator, why don't we create a tsunami scholars program? Why 
aren't we focusing on these children and their education? It is so 
simple and so obvious: To rebuild the schools, to bring in trained 
teachers so these kids have a chance but to take it a step beyond. What 
if we said across this world that we would challenge all colleges and 
universities to take two students from the tsunami area, students who 
would qualify to come to school, but to give these kids a chance at an 
education so they could go home and rebuild those villages and rebuild 
those nations?
  Another challenge from Dr. Yunus, very basic, from a man who 
understands poverty at the most basic level. We are working on that 
now. We think we can put together a proposal that the United States can 
help to lead the world into considering.
  The devastation of the tsunami took only a few minutes. It will take 
years to overcome. If we do the right things, we can rebuild those 
societies in the right way. The people living there are going to know a 
lot about us in the process. They will know that some of what they have 
been told about the United States is not true. Some who want them to be 
terrorists and to hate the United States will have a hard time 
explaining how the United States came to the assistance of these poor 
people after the tsunami and how we stood by them and their children in 
their education afterwards.
  It is a small thing. It is important. It helps explain who we are. 
Tsunami scholarships are one example of how we can make certain we do 
not abandon the victims of this disaster after the headlines are gone. 
It is important we show this to the world, especially to the Muslim 
world, of what the American character is made.

  I want to give these children of Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, 
India, and elsewhere a chance at an education that will not only 
transform their lives but allow them to go back and transform their 
countries.
  The poet, Lord Byron, advised: Be thou the rainbow to the storms of 
life.
  The peoples of the Indian Ocean have seem the storms. Let us be the 
rainbow that follows. Education is the most valuable tool you can put 
in the hands of anyone, particularly a child. As the children of the 
tsunami grow, let's make sure their opportunities for education are not 
constrained by misfortune or geography.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ALLARD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. ALLARD. Mr. President, I understand we are in Republican-
allocated time on morning business.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator is correct.

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