[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2007, Book I)]
[May 31, 2007]
[Pages 648-655]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
Remarks to the United States Global Leadership Campaign
May 31, 2007
Thank you all. Please be seated. Laura,
thanks for that short introduction. [Laughter] I'm proud to be
introduced by my wife. I love her dearly. She's a great First Lady.
And I appreciate the chance to address the U.S. Global Leadership
Campaign. This is a fine organization, and it's an important
organization. It's rallying businesses and nongovernmental organizations
and faith-based and community and civic organizations across our country
to advance a noble cause, ensuring that the United States leads the
world in spreading hope and opportunity. It's a big deal, and I
appreciate your participation.
It's a big deal because your efforts are needed. Millions suffer
from hunger and poverty and disease in this world of ours. Many nations
lack the capacity to meet the overwhelming needs of their people.
Alleviating this suffer requires bold action from America. It requires
America's leadership, and it requires the action of developed nations as
well.
That's the message I'm going to take with me to Europe next week,
when Laura and I go to the G-8. At that meeting I
will discuss our common responsibility to help struggling nations grow
strong and improve the lives of their citizens. And today I'm going to
describe some of the initiatives that I will be discussing with world
leaders next week to help developing nations build a better future for
their people.
Before I do so, I want to thank George Ingram, the president of the U.S. Global Leadership Campaign.
I thank the members of my Cabinet who share the same passion I do for
helping those less fortunate around the world. That would include Carlos
Gutierrez, Department of Commerce;
Secretary Mike Leavitt, Department of
Health and Human Services; Secretary Sam Bodman at the Department of Energy; Administrator Steve
Johnson of the EPA. Thank you all for
coming. Proud to be serving with you.
I am glad that the Acting Director of the U.S. Foreign Assistance
and Acting Administrator of USAID is here, Henrietta Fore. Thanks for coming. I appreciate John
Danilovich, who is the head of the
Millennium Challenge Corporation; Rob Mosbacher, the head of OPIC. I appreciate other members of my
administration who joined us today.
I thank the members of the diplomatic corps who are here today. I
thank the members of the U.S. Global Leadership Campaign.
We are a compassionate nation. When Americans see suffering and know
that our country can help stop it, they expect our Government to
respond. I believe in the timeless truth, and so do a lot of other
Americans: To whom much is given, much is required. We're blessed to
live in this country. We're blessed to live in the world's most
prosperous nation. And I believe we have a special responsibility to
help those who are not as blessed. It is the call to share our
prosperity with others and to reach out to brothers and sisters in need.
We help the least fortunate across the world because our conscience
demands it. We also recognize that helping struggling nations succeed is
in our interest. When
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America helps lift societies out of poverty, we create new markets for
goods and services and new jobs for American workers. Prosperity abroad
can be translated to jobs here at home. It's in our interest that we
help improve the economies of nations around the world.
When America helps reduce chaos and suffering, we make this country
safer, because prosperous nations are less likely to feed resentment and
breed violence and export terror. Helping poor nations find the path to
success benefits this economy and our security, and it makes us a better
country. It helps lift our soul and renews our spirit.
So America is pursuing a clear strategy to bring progress and
prosperity to struggling nations all across the world. We're working to
increase access to trade and relieve the burden of debt. We're
increasing our assistance to the world's poorest countries and using
this aid to encourage reform and strengthen education and fight the
scourge of disease. We'll work with developing nations to find ways to
address their energy needs and the challenge of global climate change.
Bringing progress and prosperity to struggling nations requires
opening new opportunities for trade. Trade is the best way to help poor
countries develop their economies and improve the lives of their people.
When I took office, America had free trade agreements with three
countries. Today, we have free trade agreements in force with 14
countries, most of which are in the developing world. Three weeks ago,
my administration and Congress agreed on a new trade policy that will be
applied to free trade agreements with Peru, Colombia, Panama, and South
Korea. And I look forward to working with Congress to get all these
trade bills passed. These bills are good for our economy.
But it's important for Members of Congress and the people of this
country to understand, free trade is the best way to lift people out of
poverty. And so the United States also seeks to open markets to the Doha
round of trade negotiations. Doha represents a once-in-a-generation
opportunity to help millions in the developing world rise from poverty
and despair. If you're interested in helping the poor people, you ought
to be for trade and opening up markets for their goods and services. And
the Doha round gives us an opportunity to do just that.
We put forward bold proposals to help conclude a successful Doha
round. And at the G-8 summit next week, I'm going to urge other nations
to do the same. A successful Doha round will benefit all our countries,
and it's going to transform the world.
I know that trade can transform lives; I've seen it firsthand.
Laura and I were recently in Guatemala. We went
to a small village and saw what can happen when markets are open for
local entrepreneurs. In this case, we met some farmers who for years had
struggled to survive, worked hard just to put food on the table for
their families by growing corn and beans. That's all they were able to
do. It's a hard way to make a living, growing corns and beans. When we
negotiated the trade agreement called the CAFTA-DR, which opened up new
markets for Guatemalan farmers, the entrepreneurial spirit came forth.
There are entrepreneurs all over the world. If just given a chance, they
can succeed.
Today, the farmers in that village are growing high-value crops
because they have new markets in which to sell their product. The
business we met--the entrepreneur we met now
employs 1,000 people. Trade will improve lives a lot faster than
government aid can. It's in our interest that we open up markets for our
products and for the products of others. People just want to be given a
chance. And the United States will take the lead in making sure those
markets are open for people to be able to realize a better life.
Building progress and prosperity to struggling nations requires
lifting the burden of
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debt from the poorest countries. That makes sense. It doesn't take a
Ph.D. in economics to figure out, if you're paying a lot of money on
interest, you're not having enough money to support your own people. In
the past, many poor nations borrowed money, and they couldn't repay the
debt. And their interest payments were huge. And therefore, they didn't
have the opportunity to invest in education and health care. So the
administration, my administration worked with G-8 nations to ease the
debt burden. We're not the first administration to have figured this
out. My predecessor did the same thing because it's the right policy for
the United States of America.
Two years ago at Gleneagles, the G-8 nations agreed to support a
multilateral debt relief agreement that freed poor countries of up to
$60 billion in debt. This year, we built on that progress when the
Inter-American Development Bank approved another debt relief initiative
for some of the poorest nations in our neighborhood, in our own
hemisphere. This initiative will cancel $3.4 billion owed by five
countries: Bolivia, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, and Nicaragua. And that
represents more than 12 percent of their combined GDP, an average of
nearly $110 for every man, woman, and child in these countries. And this
money is now free to help these nations invest in improving their lives
of citizens. It makes sense to forgive debt. If you're interested in
helping the poor, it makes sense for the developed world to forgive the
debt. And that's what the United States will continue to do.
Bringing progress and prosperity to struggling nations requires
increased American assistance to countries most in need. Since I took
office, we have more than doubled U.S. development spending across the
world, from about $10 billion in 2000 to $23 billion in 2006. It's the
largest increase in development assistance since the Marshall plan.
The first 4 years of my administration, we doubled our assistance to
Africa. At the G-8 summit in 2005, I promised our assistance to Africa
would double once again by 2010. I made a promise to the people. People
expect us to deliver on that promise, and I expect the Congress to help.
We must not shortchange these efforts. Congress needs to approve my full
funding request for development assistance this year. We need to get the
job done.
We're focusing increased American assistance for developing nations
on three key goals. In other words, we have some goals; we're not just
going to spend money. We have a reason to spend the money, and we expect
there to be results when we spend that money, and so do the taxpayers of
this country. It's one thing to be compassionate; it's another thing to
be accountable for the money.
First, we're going to use our aid to help developing countries build
democratic and accountable institutions and strengthen their civil
societies. To succeed in the global economy, nations need fair and
transparent legal systems, need free markets that unleash the creativity
of their citizens, need banking systems that serve people at all income
levels, and a business climate that welcomes foreign investment and
supports local entrepreneurs.
The United States is helping developing nations build these and
other free institutions through what we call the Millennium Challenge
Account. Under this program, America makes a compact with developing
nations. We give aid, and in return they agree to implement democratic
reforms, to fight corruption, to invest in their people--particularly in
health and education--and to promote economic freedom. Seems like a fair
deal, doesn't it--taxpayers' money from the United States in return for
the habits and procedures necessary for a solid society to develop. We
don't want to give aid to a country where the leaders steal
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the money. We expect there to be accountability for U.S. money, and
that's the principle behind the Millennium Challenge Account. Eleven
nations have compacts in place worth nearly $3 billion. And now 14
additional nations are eligible to negotiate compacts with the
Millennium Challenge Corporation, headed by Ambassador
Danilovich.
Let me give you an example of how this program can make a
difference. In Madagascar, the leaders of this island nation set a goal
in their compact to improve agricultural production. In other words, we
work with a nation; they have set the goal; we support their goal. They
want their farmers to be able to compete in the global marketplace. We
agreed to help by investing in agricultural business centers that work
with local farmers. In one village, this initiative helped a group of
farmers who were surviving by collecting firewood and producing
charcoal. That's how these folks were trying to get ahead. They'd find
firewood and make charcoal out of it and hope they could find a market.
It's a tough way to make a living in a modern world.
The business center that the compact established helped the farmers
work together to identify a new product, a natural oil used in skin care
products. I probably could use some of that myself here. [Laughter] The
center helped these farmers develop--helped them to develop a business
plan. They acquired financing to set up a distilling plant. They built
relationships with buyers in their nation's capital.
Before America and Madagascar signed our compact, a typical farmer
in this village could earn about $5 a week selling charcoal. After 2
months of bringing the new product to the market, the livelihood of
these farmers increased. One farmer was able to raise his income enough
to save about $500, money he plans to use for a child's education.
We're going to help encourage African entrepreneurs in other ways as
well. Today I'm announcing a new project called Africa Financial Sector
Initiative. Through this initiative, we'll provide technical assistance
to help African nations strengthen their financial markets. The U.S.
Overseas Private Investment Corp., OPIC, headed by Rob
Mosbacher, will work with the
financial community to create several new private equity funds that will
mobilize up to a billion dollars of additional private investment in
Africa.
If you're interested in job creation, there's got to be capital
available. It's in our interest that we help provide capital to African
entrepreneurs. We want them to find access to capital, and we want them
to have access to markets because we want to improve their lives. And
when people's lives in countries on the continent of Africa improve, it
helps the United States of America. It's what our taxpayers have got to
understand. It's in our interests.
All this will go for naught if people don't have a good education.
So the second way we're using our aid is to improve education so that
the young in the developing world have the tools they need to realize
their God-given potential. Many parents across the world either have no
access to education for their children or simply cannot afford it. It's
a fact of life--something the world needs to deal with, particularly
those of us who have got some money.
In many nations, girls have even less educational opportunity. It
robs them of a chance to satisfy their ambitions or to make use of their
talents and skills, and it's really sad, when you think about it. It
really is. The question is, does the United States care? Should we do
something about it? And the answer is, absolutely. If boys and girls in
Africa and other developing nations don't learn how to read, write, and
add and subtract, this world is just going to move on without them. And
all the aid efforts we'll be trying will go to naught, in my judgment.
And so in 2002, I launched the African Education Initiative to help
address the great need. Through this initiative, we have
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provided about $300 million to expand educational opportunities
throughout the continent, and we're going to provide another $300
million by 2010. We will have doubled our commitment.
One young woman who has benefited from this program is a woman named
Evelyn Nkadori from the Maasai people of the
grasslands of Kenya. In her rural community, girls are rarely offered an
education, just never given a chance. They're expected to care for
younger children until they're married themselves at an early age. That
was the custom. She had a different vision for her future, and our
initiative helped her realize it. Our program helped her complete high
school, and now she's attending Chicago State University on a
scholarship. She is one of the first women from her village ever to
receive a college education. She hopes to attend medical school and then
go home and help others.
Evelyn, I appreciate you being here
today. I'm honored in your presence. Thank you for your courage. We
can't make you want to succeed, but we can help you succeed. Thanks for
coming.
And we need to do more, for not only children on the continent of
Africa but poor children throughout the world. And so I'm calling on
Congress to fund $525 million over the next 5 years to make our
educational initiatives even more robust. And the goal is to provide
basic education for 4 million additional children on the continent of
Africa and across the globe.
We've got another interesting idea, and that is to establish new
communities of opportunity centers in poor nations to provide skills and
language training for 100,000 at-risk youth. Giving these young people
in these countries the skills they need to succeed, we're going to give
them keys to a brighter future.
The third way we're using our aid is to fight the scourge of disease
in Africa and other parts of the developing world. Epidemics like HIV/
AIDS and malaria destroy lives, and they decimate families. They also
impose a crippling economic burden on societies where so many are
struggling to lift their families out of poverty. We've taken action to
fight these diseases. We've done so because it's in our Nation's
interest to do so.
In 2003, my administration launched a new initiative to combat HIV/
AIDS: the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. We
pledged $15 billion over 5 years for AIDS prevention and treatment and
care programs in many of the poorest nations on Earth. This level of
support was unprecedented. I'm proud to report, on behalf of our
citizens, that it remains the largest commitment by any nation ever to
combat a single disease.
And the program is working. Three years ago, about 50,000 people on
the continent of Africa were receiving antiretroviral drugs for help.
Today, over 1.1 million people are receiving lifesaving drugs. And this
is a good start, it's a necessary start, and it's a promising start. But
we need to do more. So yesterday in the Rose Garden, Kunene and Baron and the good doc--and I don't
know where the Bishop is--[laughter]--anyway,
they were standing with me up there when I called on Congress to greatly
expand our efforts in the fight against HIV/AIDS, by doubling our
initial commitment, by dedicating an additional $30 billion to this
struggle over the next 5 years, beginning in the year 2009.
And here's the goal: support treatment for nearly 2.5 million
people, to prevent more than 12 million new infections, and to provide
compassionate care for 12 million people, including 5 million more
orphans and vulnerable children. We set the goal for the past
initiative, and we met it. And we're going to set the goal for this one,
and we're going to meet it. But Congress needs to get that money as
quickly as possible so it makes it easier to meet the goal. I proposed
this unprecedented investment for a reason. It's in the world's interest
and our Nation's interest to save
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lives. And that's exactly what this program is doing.
We saved a life of a fellow named Robert Ongole. He's with us today. John Robert Ongole--not yet, not yet,
John Robert. [Laughter] I'm going to make it a little more dramatic than
that. [Laughter] You probably didn't know who I was talking about when I
skipped the ``John.'' [Laughter]
John Robert has a family of two children;
he has HIV/AIDS. This disease ravaged his body. His weight dropped to 99
pounds. He developed tuberculosis and other health problems. He and his
family felt certain that he would die. Then John Robert began receiving
antiretroviral treatment through PEPFAR in Uganda. His treatment
restored his strength. He returned to the classroom, and he continued
being a dad.
John Robert is earning his bachelor's
degree in education. He's volunteering to help other people. The
American people need to hear what he had to say: ``When you talk of
PEPFAR, that's my life because it worked. Because without it, I couldn't
have lived. Now I want to save the lives of other people.'' Thanks for
coming, John Robert.
Does it matter to America if John Robert
lives? You bet it does. That's why this initiative is an important
initiative. That's why it's important Congress continue to spend
taxpayers' money to save lives like John Robert's and Kunene's and Baron's.
As we increase our commitment to fight HIV/AIDS, we're also
continuing an unprecedented commitment to fight against malaria. Malaria
takes the lives of about 1 million people a year in the developing
world, and the vast majority are under 5 years old. In some countries,
this disease takes even more lives than HIV/AIDS. Every 30 seconds, a
mother in Africa loses her child to malaria. It's a tragic disease
because it's preventable and treatable. We can do something about it.
In 2005, I announced the President's Malaria Initiative. Through
this initiative, we're spending $1.2 billion over 5 years to fight the
disease in 15 targeted African countries. This initiative provides
insecticide-treated bed nets, indoor spraying, and lifesaving
antimalaria medications. This strategy works. It really isn't all that
complicated. It takes money and organization and effort.
In Angola, this initiative helped increase the number of children
protected by nets from less than 5 percent to nearly 70 percent. You buy
the nets, you educate the people, and you get the nets to them. And when
they start using them, lives are saved. This initiative has expanded
malaria protection for more than 6 million Africans in its first year.
And by the end of the second year, in 2007, we expect to reach a total
of 30 million people.
At the G-8 summit, I'm going to urge our partners to join us in this
unprecedented effort to fight these dreaded diseases. America is proud
to take the lead. We expect others to join us as well. If you want to
help improve lives on the continent of Africa and around the world, join
with the United States and provide substantial help to fight HIV/AIDS
and malaria.
Bringing progress and prosperity to struggling nations requires
growing amounts of energy. It's hard to grow your economy if you don't
have energy. Yet, producing that energy can create environmental
challenges for the world. We need to harness the power of technology to
help nations meet their growing energy needs while protecting the
environment and addressing the challenge of global climate change.
In recent years, science has deepened our understanding of climate
change and opened new possibilities for confronting it. The United
States takes this issue seriously. The new initiative I am outlining
today will contribute to the important dialog that we--will take place
in Germany next week. The United States will work with other nations to
establish a new framework on
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greenhouse gas emissions for when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.
So my proposal is this: By the end of next year, America and other
nations will set a long-term global goal for reducing greenhouse gases.
To help develop this goal, the United States would convene a series of
meetings of nations that produce the most greenhouse gas emissions,
including nations with rapidly growing economies like India and China.
In addition to this long-term global goal, each country would
establish midterm national targets and programs that reflect their own
mix of energy sources and future energy needs. Over the course of the
next 18 months, our nations would bring together industry leaders from
different sectors of our economies, such as power generation and
alternative fuels and transportation. These leaders will form working
groups that will cooperate on ways to share clean energy technology and
best practices.
It's important to ensure that we get results, and so we would create
a strong and transparent system for measuring each country's
performance. This new framework would help our nations fulfill our
responsibilities under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The United States will work with all nations that are part of this
convention to adapt to the impacts of climate change, gain access to
clean and more energy-efficient technologies, and promote sustainable
forestry and agriculture.
The way to meet this challenge of energy and global climate change
is through technology, and the United States is in the lead. The world
is on the verge of great breakthroughs that will help us become better
stewards of the environment. Over the past 6 years, my administration
has spent, along with the Congress, more than $12 billion in research on
clean energy technology. We're the world's leader when it comes to
figuring out new ways to power our economy and be good stewards of the
environment.
We're investing in new technologies to produce electricity in
cleaner ways, including solar and wind energy, clean coal technologies.
If we can get a breakthrough in clean coal technologies, it's going to
help the developing world immeasurably and, at the same time, help
protect our environment.
We're spending a lot of money on clean, safe nuclear power. If
you're truly interested in cleaning up the environment or interested in
renewable sources of energy, the best way to do so is through safe
nuclear power. We're investing in new technologies that transform the
way we fuel our cars and trucks. We're expanding the use of hybrid and
clean diesel vehicles and biodiesel fuel.
We're spending a lot of your money in figuring out ways to produce
ethanol from products other than corn. One of these days, we'll be
making fuel to power our automobiles from wood chips, to switchgrasses,
to agricultural wastes. I think it makes sense to have our farmers
growing energy, so that we don't have to import it from parts of the
world where they may not like us too much. And it's good for our
environment as well.
We're pressing on with battery research for plug-in hybrid vehicles
that can be powered by electricity from a wall socket, instead of
gasoline. We're continuing to research into advance hydrogen-powered
vehicles that emit pure water instead of exhaust fumes. We're taking
steps to make sure these technologies reach the market, setting new
mandatory fuel standards that require 35 billion gallons of renewable
and alternative fuels by the year 2017. It's a mandatory fuel standard.
We want to reduce our gasoline consumption by 20 percent over the next
10 years, which will not only help our national security, it will make
us better stewards of the environment. The United States is taking the
lead, and that's the message I'm going to take to the G-8.
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Last week, the Department of Energy announced that in 2006, our
carbon emissions decreased by 1.3 percent while our economy grew by 3.3
percent. This experience shows that a strong and growing economy can
deliver both a better life for its people and a cleaner environment at
the same time.
At the G-8 summit, I'm going to encourage world leaders to increase
their own investments in research and development. I'm looking forward
to working with them. I'm looking forward to discussing ways to
encourage more investment in developing nations by making low-cost
financing options for clean energy a priority of the international
development banks.
We're also going to work to conclude talks with other nations on
eliminating tariffs and other barriers to clean energy technologies and
services by the end of year. If you are truly committed to helping the
environment, nations need to get rid of their tariffs, need to get rid
of those barriers that prevent new technologies from coming into their
countries. We'll help the world's poorest nations reduce emissions by
giving them government-developed technologies at low cost or, in some
case, no cost at all.
We have an historic opportunity in the world to extend prosperity to
regions that have only known poverty and despair. The United States is
in the lead, and we're going to stay in the lead.
The initiatives I've discussed today are making a difference in the
lives of millions; our fellow citizens have got to understand that.
We're talking about improving lives in a real, tangible way that ought
to make our country proud. That's why we've asked these folks to come.
It's one thing for the President to be talking about stories, it's
another thing for the people to see firsthand what our help has done.
I'm so proud of the United States of America. This initiative shows
the good character and the decency of the American people. We are a
decent people. We feel responsible for helping those who are less
fortunate. And I am proud to be the President of such a good nation.
Thanks for coming, and God bless.
Note: The President spoke at 10:07 a.m. at the Ronald Reagan Building
and International Trade Center. In his remarks, he referred to Manyongo
``Kunene'' Mosima Tantoh, member, Mothers to Mothers-To-Be, and her son,
Baron; Jean W. Pape, director, Haitian Study Group on Kaposi's Sarcoma
and Opportunistic Infections; and His Grace Bishop Paul, director,
Coptic Hope Center. The transcript released by the Office of the Press
Secretary also included the remarks of the First Lady, who introduced
the President.