[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 139 (Monday, September 9, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Page S5864]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Muhammad Yunus

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, it was over 20 years ago when I was a 
Member of the House of Representatives that one of my colleagues Mike 
Synar, then a Congressman from Oklahoma, asked me if I would like to 
join him on a trip.
  I said: Where do you want to go, Mike? I'm not all that popular back 
home in my district, so you better pick a place that we can explain. He 
said: I am going to take you to a place that no one will ever complain 
about. I would like you to go with me to Bangladesh.
  I said: Where is that? He said: I will show you. And off we went to 
Bangladesh halfway around the world. It was a great trip. It is a poor 
country that has been through a lot of political turmoil. It has had 
more than its share of natural disasters, and they are a remarkable 
people.
  During the course of that trip, I was introduced to an economics 
professor at the university. He was an interesting character. He would 
come up with a theory that he thought would help the poorest people on 
earth. It was known as microcredit, and he created something called the 
Grameen Bank, the people's bank.
  And, basically, what he set out to do was to prove that you could 
loan a small amount of money to the poorest people on earth and 
dramatically change their lives.
  They would pay it back, and they would start to be more constructive, 
more profitable in what they were doing. It was just a theory at the 
time, but he is starting to prove it. We kept in touch after leaving 
that visit, and I watched over the years as he expanded the concept.
  Pretty soon, there were cell phones in these tiny little villages in 
Bangladesh. One person would own a cell phone and sell minutes on the 
phone for people to call in to the nearest city to see if this was the 
right time to bring their produce to market.
  His name was Muhammad Yunus, and he caught the attention not just of 
this Congressman--now a Senator--but he caught the attention of the 
world. When it was all said and done, he received the Nobel Peace Prize 
for his work in economics.
  I thought he was extraordinary and should be recognized here as well, 
so I led the effort with the late Senator Mike Enzi and Congressman 
Rush Holt to award the Congressional Gold Medal to this remarkable 
economics professor--Dr. Muhammad Yunus. He was sometimes known as the 
``Banker to the Poor'' after he received the Nobel Prize.

  He pioneered microlending as a groundbreaking method of helping some 
of the world's poorest people. He recognized that, just with a little 
bit of money in hand, many people could lift themselves out of poverty, 
but traditional banks wouldn't lend small sums to the poor, 
particularly the women who were poor. Banks saw such loans as too 
risky, not profitable, and unworthy.
  Dr. Yunus never gave up. He saw things differently, with incredible 
results. Through his Grameen Bank, he proved that microlending could be 
done collateral-free and investing in poor women actually paid off. In 
fact, most of Grameen Bank's loans have gone to poor women who rise 
from terrible poverty to become small business people.
  I have seen the results of that innovative approach all over the 
world now, including a visit to a ramshackle hut in Uganda, where I met 
three mothers who were working in a local market. I asked them, through 
an interpreter, how microcredit had changed their lives. One woman 
said: ``My knees have gone soft.'' I didn't understand what she meant. 
I asked her to explain.
  She said: Before I got my microcredit loan, which gave me a chance to 
go to the market and make a little money, I used to have to crawl on my 
knees to beg my husband for money to feed the children. I don't have to 
crawl anymore. My knees have gone soft.
  I will never forget that exchange.
  In recent decades, more than 140 million people on 5 continents have 
received microloans with incredible repayment rates and success. Quite 
simply, Dr. Muhammad Yunus's ideas changed the World and helped to earn 
him that Nobel Peace Prize.
  Tragically, his ideas also earned him the wrath of the Bangladeshi 
Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, whose government harassed Dr. Yunus for 
years with questionable legal charges and threatened jail time.
  So imagine my surprise last month--just a few weeks ago, during this 
break. Hasina finally resigned as Prime Minister of Bangladesh amidst 
massive public protest, and the students who were leading the protest 
demanded that the leader of their country be none other than Dr. 
Muhammad Yunus, the same economics professor I met more than 20 years 
ago. They asked him to create a caretaker government and hold new 
elections, which he is in the process of doing.
  I called him on the phone when I heard of his good fortune and the 
fact that he is now the leader of that nation. I asked him what I could 
do to help, and he said: We need so much help to stabilize the economy 
and move forward with this poor nation. I will be coming to the United 
Nations in the next few weeks.
  I hope to get the chance to see him. I hope he can make it down here 
to Washington.
  He was upbeat. He believes the people of that country are prepared 
now to rise to this historic opportunity.
  I am going to offer my full support to him today. I believe in him. I 
did 20 years ago, and I do today. I urge President Biden to support him 
as well. I know Dr. Yunus has the best interest of the Bangladeshi 
people at heart and will do his utmost in this challenging time.