FROM THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

In the coming days the United States Congress will be making some important decisions about the investments that we make in supporting our national interests overseas. It is important that the American people understand what is at stake in some of these decisions.

In 1991, President Bush requested funding for a $1.8 billion U.S. contribution to the International Financial Institutions. For 2000, President Clinton has requested $1.4 billion and yet Congress has cut that request to just $895 million. That is less than half the level of spending in 1991 and more than 35 percent below the Presidents request. And it is not enough to get the job done.

The same bill would also fatally undermine a global effort to reduce the debt of the poorest countries. In the current bill, appropriations for this effort would be just $33 million compared to the Presidents request for $970 million over 4 years.

The Presidents International Affairs request for these and other international priorities is not large by historical standards and it is barely one percent of the total federal budget. Because it is fully funded, it does not subtract from our capacity to meet critical domestic priorities and it does not mean spending any of the Social Security surplus.

The request was carefully crafted to include only high return investments in Americas core interests and its global leadership investments that for more than 50 years have enjoyed strong bipartisan support:

• Every dollar we contribute to the multilateral development banks leverages more than $45 in official lending to countries where more than three-quarters of the worlds people live.
  

• As the President has noted, the U.S. has less than 5 percent of the worlds population and more than 20 percent of its income. To maintain our standard of living, we need other countries to develop and become larger markets for our goods and services. These programs are focused on exactly that on building market economies in the developing world that are open to our goods and our ideas. Quite simply, they are the most effective tools we have for investing in the markets for tomorrow.
  
• By supporting these programs we help to sustain American global economic leadership and to promote changes overseas that reflect core American values like free markets, strong property rights and open borders.
  
• Writing off debts owed by countries that will never be able to repay them is sound financial accounting. It is also a moral imperative at a time when a new generation of African leaders is trying to throw off the legacies of the Cold War and open up their economies.
  
• That is what the Heavily Indebted Poor Country initiative is about. It will not write off the debts of countries that are not working to reform. It will help build future markets in countries that are committed to helping themselves.

The Foreign Operations legislation passed by Congress would prevent core investments in this country's future, which is why the President vetoed it. Its potential budget saving would be minimal, but the long-term costs for American leadership, American markets and American values would be incomparably higher.