[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000-2001, Book III)]
[November 6, 2000]
[Pages 2483-2485]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
Remarks on Funding To Provide Debt Relief for Poor Nations
November 6, 2000
The President. Thank you very much. I'd like to welcome you all here
to the White House, especially the distinguished members of the
diplomatic corps who are here, and four of the Members of the United
States Congress who helped to make this possible: Representative Spencer
Bachus, Representative John Kasich, Representative John LaFalce, and Senator Paul Sarbanes. I
thank you all for being here.
You know, in Washington, DC, if you get a group this diverse in the
same room, you're normally there for a roast. [Laughter] Today, happily,
it's a celebration.
Just a few moments ago, with the members of the administration who
are here, I signed into law a bill to provide funding for the entire
$435 million needed for the United States to do its share in debt relief
this year for the world's poorest countries. It also gives the
International Monetary Fund the authority it needs to do its share, as
well.
I am so grateful for everyone here who made it possible, including
Secretaries Summers and
Albright, Gene Sperling, Sandy Berger, and the other
members of the administration, representatives of the religious
organizations, the NGO's, the business community, members of the
diplomatic corps, and especially the Members of Congress who had the
most astonishing bipartisan coalition for this endeavor.
I would like to thank one Member who is not here, Nancy
Pelosi, for all the work she did on this as
well. And I am sorry that Bobby Shriver,
who also played a key role in this effort, could not be with us today
because of his mother's illness, and
I ask for your prayers for him and his family, and especially for his
remarkable mother, Eunice, who has fought for so many good humanitarian
causes in her long and rich life.
Our Nation is taking this important step today because we understand
that making the global economy work for everyone is not a political
nicety but an economic, strategic, and moral necessity. Open markets and
open trade are critically important to lifting living standards and
building shared prosperity. But they alone cannot carry the burden of
lifting the poorest nations out of poverty. While the forces of
globalization may be inexorable, its benefits are not, especially for
countries that lack the most important building blocks of progress--a
healthy population with broadbased literacy.
Here in our Nation, this will be remembered as a time of great
plenty, but we cannot forget that for too many of the world--too many in
the world, it is still a time of astonishing poverty. Nearly half the
human race, 2.8 billion people, lives on less than $2 a day. In many
countries, a child is 3 times more likely to die before the age of 5
than to go to secondary school. One in 10 children dies before his or
her first birthday. One in three is malnourished. The average adult has
only 3 years of schooling. This is not right, not necessary, and no
longer acceptable.
I have committed our Nation during my service as President to wage
an intensified battle against global poverty. I never accepted the idea
that millions have to be left behind while the rest of us move ahead.
The health of nations is not a zero-sum game. By lifting the weakest,
poorest among us, we lift all the rest of us, as well.
I hope that this idea will be a priority in our foreign policy for a
long time to come, no less important than promoting trade, investment
and financial stability. It will be good for our economy because it
represents an investment in future markets, good for our security
because in the long run it is dangerously destabilizing to have half the
world on the cutting edge of technology while the other half struggles
on the bare edge of survival.
But most of all, as the religious leaders around the world have told
us, and as those here will make clear again, it will be good for
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our souls, because global poverty is a moral affront and confronting the
challenge is simply the right thing to do.
The United States has greatly increased funding to combat diseases
like HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis in developing countries, which
combine to claim one in four of the lives lost on the planet every year.
With the bill I just signed, we will have more than doubled our support
for HIV/AIDS prevention treatment and care in just 2 years. And again,
this is a great tribute to the bipartisan agreement achieved in
Congress.
I hope soon Congress will put even more resources behind the World
Bank's AIDS trust fund, a bipartisan initiative that I think deserves
every American's support, and pass a vaccine tax credit to increase
immunization in the world's poorest countries.
We have also launched a $300 million pilot initiative to provide
free meals, to encourage the parents of 9 million boys and girls in poor
countries to send them to school. We are working to dramatically expand
support for nations committed to expanding basic literacy and reducing
abusive child labor. We have initiated the Digital Opportunity Task
Force, and we're working to help 20 African countries now connect to the
Internet, training 1,500 government and civic institutions to do it.
But none of these efforts is more important than relieving the
world's poorest nations from the crippling burden of massive debt. Debt
that was often piled up by dictators who have now fled the scene. Debt
so crushing that in some instances, the annual interest payments on it
exceeds the national budgets for health and education. Debt that is a
drag on growth and a drain on resources that could be used to help meet
the most basic human needs: clean water, schools, medicine, food.
More than a year ago, His Holiness the Pope called for debt forgiveness in this, the jubilee year.
With the help of countless others, this grassroots effort grew into
Jubilee 2000. The United States made this issue a centerpiece of the G-7
summit in Cologne last year. We crafted a plan for creditor nations to
triple the debt relief available to the world's poorest nations,
provided--and this is an important ``provided''--that they committed
themselves to economic reform, that they channel the savings into health
and education, and that they resolve to have peaceful relations with
their neighbors.
Today the United States follows through on our part of that
international commitment. Already, debt relief is making a difference
around the world. Mozambique, for example, is buying much-needed
medicines for government clinics. Uganda used its savings to double its
primary school enrollment.
Now, with the United States' contribution, Bolivia will save $77
million and will start using it on health and education. Honduras will
begin to offer every child 9 years of schooling, instead of 6. I believe
everyone here is clear about why we have had the success so far. We have
worked together across lines that too often divide--lines of party,
religion, geography--to accomplish a common aid.
In this group, we have evangelists and economists, Democrats and
Republicans, nongovernmental organizations, labor unions, the business
community, advocates for Africa. When you get this many people from this
many different backgrounds pointing in the same direction, you can be
pretty sure it's the right direction.
I thank all of you again for your inspired work. I also want to
thank one more person who couldn't be here today, Bono.
[Laughter] Bono has done--I can't help noting, there have been a lot of
ancillary benefits to Bono's passionate devotion to this. [Laughter]
I'll never forget one day Secretary Summers coming in to me saying, ``You know, some guy just came in
to see me in jeans and a T-shirt, and he just had one name, but he sure
was smart. Do you know anything about him?'' [Laughter]
So Bono has advanced the cultural awareness--
[laughter]--of the American political establishment, embracing everyone
from Larry Summers to Jesse
Helms. It's been a great gift to America's
appreciation of modern music. [Laughter]
One of U2's biggest hits is ``I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking
For.'' Well, with this bill and these funds and this diverse coalition,
Bono and the rest of us, we've found what we're looking
for, and we need to build on it. And let's give Bono a big hand today.
He'll be watching, I'm sure. [Applause] Thank you.
The song goes on to say that we have found the spirit to climb the
highest mountains, to break the bonds and loose the chains. It shows
that when we get the Pope and the pop stars
all singing on the same sheet of music, our voices do carry to the
heavens. The question now for us is, where do we go from here?
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We have to implement this program well; and if we do implement it well
and it works, then there will be broad support around the world to
extend it to other nations.
We need to find the same energy to develop a real, comprehensive,
and adequate consensus on helping nations to turn around the AIDS
struggle. We need to direct this energy toward making sure that every
child, even in the poorest countries, gets the chance to develop his or
her full potential in a decent school. We need to develop the capacity
to help struggling countries that have totally inadequate public health
systems and inadequate clean water systems, the basics of a decent life,
develop those systems.
In short, we need to redirect this energy toward a worldwide
consensus on the importance of building a global economy with a human
face that leaves no one behind. Based on what I have seen in these last
several months, I think we can do that, if we bring the same dedication,
the same commitment, the same energy that have brought about this
celebration today.
Let me say, for me, this last year and a half or so has been an
incredible experience, thanks to so many of you. I thank particularly
the Members of Congress. I embarrassed, I think, Spencer Bachus--I was afraid it would generate a write-in
campaign to beat him in his heavily Republican district because I said
that he had absolutely nothing to gain by doing this. He just did it
because he thought it was the right thing to do. And that's true of so
many of you.
So I just want to say that I believe this is one of the most
important moments of the last 8 years for the United States of America.
I believe that this will put our country squarely on the side of
humanity for a very, very long time to come. And I am profoundly
grateful to all of you.
And now I would like to ask the president of Bread for the World,
the Reverend David Beckmann, to come to the
podium.
Thank you very much.
[At this point Reverend Beckmann, Rev.
Elenora Giddings Ivory, director,
Washington office, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and Secretary of the
Treasury Lawrence H. Summers made brief
remarks.]
The President. Thank you very much. This is the conclusion of our
program. I would like to say that I am personally grateful to a lot of
people who didn't get to speak today, but who worked like crazy on this:
Gene Sperling, who found an excuse to sleep
even less at night until this passed--[laughter]--and John
Podesta; Steve Ricchetti; Chuck Brain, who lobbied this
for us so heavily in the Congress. And I thank Sylvia Mathews and Jack Lew at OMB, and all
the others who worked on this. And, Secretary Albright, I thank you.
One of the things that we do with our AID program to try to
alleviate poverty is, we make 2 million microenterprise loans a year to
poor people trying to develop functional economic enterprises in poor
countries. It is absolutely impossible if they're being weighed down. I
completely agree with the conclusion of Secretary Summers' talk. But the instruments for creating
opportunity that the United States has now are far more likely to
succeed in those states where the debt has been relieved.
What a happy day. Let's remember the admonition of all the speakers
and keep on working at it. And next year when I'm just Joe Citizen, I'll
do my part, too. Let's keep going.
Thank you very much. God bless you.
Note: The President spoke at noon in the East Room at the White House.
In his remarks, he referred to Robert Shriver III, Jubilee 2000
advocate, and his mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver; Pope John Paul II; and
musician Bono. H.R. 4811, making appropriations for foreign operations,
export financing, and related programs for fiscal year 2001, approved
November 6, was assigned Public Law No. 106-429.