DEBT RELIEF AT THE MILLENNIUM : This could be the start of something big

Commonweal, Dec 15, 2000 by David Beckmann

On October 2, I was seated at a table in the Cabinet Room in the West Wing of the White House. Across the table sat President Bill Clinton; at the table's end was Pat Robertson of the Christian Coalition. Congressman John Kasich (R-Ohio) and Bono, lead singer of the rock group U2, were seated near the president. Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, Rabbi David Saperstein, and other religious, congressional, and administration leaders filled the other seats.

It sounds like a comedian's opening line. A bishop, an evangelical, a rabbi, and a rock star are at the White House to meet with the president. Stop me if you've heard this one.

The surprising reality: I was witness to a remarkable coalition of leaders brought together at a "mini-summit" about a single issue: helping some of the world's poorest countries get a fresh start in the new millennium. The group had gathered to talk about debt relief, the biblical concept of jubilee in which slaves are freed and debts forgiven, applied to some of the poorest countries that struggle to meet payments at the cost of food, education, and health care for their people.

At the end of the meeting, the participants vowed to work with their constituencies and colleagues to make sure Congress funded the full amount needed for debt relief for 2001, $435 million, before the end of the session. With just a few weeks to go, it was a lofty task.

But the coalition knew it had a firm base of citizen support. The group that met with President Clinton did not gather spontaneously, nor did debt relief leap to the political forefront by chance. Behind both was a grass-roots movement inspired by the Jubilee 2000 campaign.

It all began with the African Council of Churches' call for debt forgiveness to mark the millennial jubilee. In response, in 1994 activists in England launched an international campaign, christened Jubilee 2000, to push for the cancellation of poor-country debt. Pope John Paul II and Archbishop Desmond Tutu voiced their support. Over the next few years, Jubilee 2000 grew into a worldwide movement of Catholics, Protestants, and others in more than sixty-five countries.

The Jubilee 2000 idea (backed by 20 million petition signatures worldwide) was simple: poor countries owe huge debts to the governments of rich countries and to international financial institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The debts are so large and the interest has ballooned so incredibly that the debtor countries must curtail social programs like education and health care to service the debt. In Tanzania, for example, for every dollar spent on debt, only a quarter is spent on health care.

Much of the international debt owed by the poorest countries can never be paid--the debts are simply too great. And keeping worthless debt on the books isn't worth anything to the governments and intergovernmental agencies that made what turned out to be bad loans. The cost of writing off bad debts is minimal to a lender nation. Canceling the debt gives poor or debtor countries a fresh start and provides crucial relief to people in great need.

The support of the United States was essential to the Jubilee campaign. Every dollar the United States contributes to a debt-relief initiative leverages an additional twenty dollars from other countries. And though the United States isn't owed as much bilateral (country-to-country) debt as are other industrialized nations, the U.S. influence in World Bank and IMF operations is critical.

In the United States, Bread for the World, the U.S. Catholic Conference, major Protestant denominations, and Oxfam joined forces to develop debt-relief legislation and mount a lobbying campaign. The movement spread across the country as the group earned the support of U.S. religious leaders and churches. Now it was time to find voices in Congress.

First, we found conservative Congressman Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.). Bachus had never thought much about global hunger and poverty before early 1999 when he was made chair of the international subcommittee of the House Banking Committee. But shortly after his appointment, Bachus got a visit from some constituents, members of a Catholic parish and a Presbyterian church in his district. They had come to talk with him about debt relief.

Bachus was moved by the visit, and agreed to be a lead cosponsor of a debt-relief bill. And he carried the message one step further. He held a hearing on debt relief. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has said that it was Bachus who convinced him that there was bipartisan support for debt relief, and that it was time for the U.S. government to act.

Summers prepared the U.S. proposal that President Clinton took to the summit of wealthy G-7 countries in Cologne, in June 1999. At that meeting, the G-7 nations adopted the U.S. plan, which, in response to the legislation that church groups were supporting, stipulated that debt relief would be used specifically to help poor people.

When the full banking committee met, Bachus, a Southern Baptist, held up a statement on debt relief from Pope John Paul II and said, "I haven't read much by Catholics before, but I don't know how any Christian could read what the pope is saying here and not agree that we need to do something about the debt of these countries. If we don't reduce this debt, people in these countries are going to be suffering for the rest of their lives--and we're going to be suffering a lot longer than that."