Washington shows solidarity - U.S. aid to Poland

National Review, Oct 27, 1989 by William McGurn

WASHINGTON, D.C.-On a clear, cool day last April, George Bush addressed a small but enthusiastic crowd of Polish-Americans from the steps of city hall in Hamtramck, Michigan. With Edmund Cardinal Szoka at his side, the President pledged U.S. backing for the Solidarity-inspired reforms beginning to take root in Warsaw and outlined a number of specific actions the U.S. could take: reducing tariffs, renegotiating Poland's foreign debt, clearing the way for joint ventures, loaning money to the private sector, arranging debt-for-equity swaps, and increasing U.S. technical and educational assistance. President Bush ended his speech with the words Nieck zyje Polska-"Let Poland live."

Things have changed; the question of Poland's survival is no longer just rhetorical. Obviously the most significant change has been the emergence of a Solidarity government, led by Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowjecki. This government has inherited an economy in shambles and a Communist faction (not to mention the So-

viet Union) with a vested interest in seeing it fail. With a crushing $39- billion debt, an industrial sector with lower productivity now than in 1982, and signs of incipient hyperinflation, the outlook is bleak. Undaunted, Warsaw's first non-Communist government since World War 11 has boldly announced its intention to "transform the Polish economy into a market economy." "Poland is full of human potential and dynamism," says Mark Michalski, an emigre Polish economist who works at the Australian Embassy here. "They have the will-many Poles work two or three jobs just to make ends meet-but they need to be retrained and redirected. That's where the U.S. can really help. Money is not the main thing." You wouldn't know that from the check-writing contest on Capitol Hill. The original White House package of $100 million was offered by President Bush in Warsaw this July, when Poland still had a Communist government. The Democratic alternative, introduced by Senator Paul Simon (D., Ill.) and reported out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, would raise that to $300 million for the next three years. "The only difference between our bill and the Administration's [original proposall is that we are adding more money to the enterprise fund," says Simon aide John Stein. "We're talking about supporting the Solidarity government by trying to create a middle class." Mr. Stein argues that the bill is directed toward the private sector, and thus bears no resemblance to the 1970s loan policies which left a $39-billion debt in their wake.

But the GOP isn't buying. " Sure they are just spending more money and changing the funding," says Al

Lehn, an aide to Senator Robert Dole (R.,Kan.). "But these are huge differences. The Simon bill would spend a lot more money in areas where the Polish government is not asking for it, and the Democrats would fund this by taking the money from U.S. defense, primarily SDI." Even so, it's a neat trick. Senator Simon and his colleagues are positioning themselves to attack the President for "not doing enough" for

Poland; their ideal seenario would be to force President Bush to veto their package, thus making him appear too cheap to help Solidarity in its time of need. So far it seems to be working.

"We're in support of the Simon bill," says the executive director of the D.C. office of the Polish-American Congress, Myra Leonard. We're shooting for as much American support for Poland as we can get."

But another member of the Polish- American Congress says its support was only a tactic to pressure the Administration. So things may change now that the President has come up with a more comprehensive package, which corresponds to the reform program Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz put on the table at the IMF-World Bank annual meeting here late last month. Mr. Balcerowicz called for a $1-billion loan to stabilize the all-but-worthless zloty, along with $500 million in immediate short-term assistance to pay for goods like spare parts and fertilizer.

The impression that the Democrats' plan is more generous is misleading, because the money would go into long-term loans rather than the shortterm fix the new government says it desperately needs. Nevertheless the Democrats will argue that the Administration's new package is a grudging concession, and that their willingness to spend is a sign of their greater sincerity. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (D., Me.), for example, has called President Bush too "timid" in his responses to changes in the USSR and Eastern Europe, and his colleagues appear ready to ride this horse for all it's worth.

A taste of this came during a Senate debate on an amendment offered by Jesse Helms (R., N.C.) to ensure that any U.S. assistance for Poland not go to help the Communists. Democrat after Democrat rose to counterattack. Barbara Mikulski

(D., Md.), the first Polish-American woman elected to Congress, took the lead, invoking her pious, immigrant great-grandmother and declaiming that no one can be as fiercely anti- Communist or militarily anti-Communist as someone of Polish extraction." This fierce anti-Communism was conspicuous by its absence when support for the democratic resistance in Nicaragua has been at stake, with Miss Mikulski giving the Contras not a farthing.