[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 45 (Monday, November 13, 2000)]
[Pages 2802-2805]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on Signing Poor Nation Debt-Relief Funding Legislation

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.

[[Page 2803]]

    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 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

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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? 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.

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    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, advocate, Jubilee 
2000, and his mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver; Pope John Paul II; and 
musician Bono.