Congress Continues to Evade Debt Relief

Bread for the World
Wednesday, 21 June 2000

House and Senate votes provide only token debt relief

Yesterday, the Foreign Operations Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee voted to provide only $69 million of the $435 million needed to fulfill the U.S. commitment to the international debt relief plan. The Senate is likely to vote today to provide $75 million for debt relief, scarcely better.

By failing to fulfill U.S. international obligations for debt relief, both houses of Congress are undercutting U.S. leadership and making it easy for other nations to shirk their obligations as well. During last June's G-7 meetings in Cologne, the United States made enthusiastic commitments to the debt relief plan, but Congress has so far refused to honor them.

Congress is demonstrating a callous disregard for the poverty and misery inflicted on people in developing countries that strain under the yoke of an unjust debt burden. As long as nations are forced to pay onerous debt at the expense of medicine and basic education, they cannot provide decent lives for their citizens.

The voice of Congress speaks powerfully on this issue: it doesn't seem to matter that African children die every day from preventable disease because their governments are forced to spend more on debt service than on health care. As the world looks to the United States for leadership, Congress makes our great nation look stingy and irresponsible.

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