Remarks on Signing Poor Nation Debt-Relief Funding Legislation - Transcript

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Nov 13, 2000

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 cuffing 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 countries now connect to the Internet, training 1,500 government and civic institutions to do it.