Financial Services Hearing on Global Poverty
October 3rd, 2007 by Jesse LeeThe Financial Services Committee is currently holding a hearing, “The Fight against Global Poverty and Inequality: the World Bank’s Approach to Core Labor Standards and Employment Creation.” Representatives of the International Trade Union Confederation/Global Unions, Millers Rock Consulting, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the AFL-CIO, the Brookings Institution and the ABN-AMRO will testify.
Chairman Frank: “Essentially, what we get from the ‘Doing Business’ report is the nicer you are to your workers the worse you are as a place to do business. It is an extraordinarily, I think, simplistic and regressive approach. And, while in the “Doing Business” report they say “well, it doesn’t have an actual binding effect”, of course it is important or they wouldn’t put it out … And it should be wrong for the major international institution in the world, the World Bank, to be putting out a report in which, the worse you treat your workers, everything else being equal, the better you are rated.” |
Rep. Bill Pascrell (NJ-08): “Mr. Speaker, 90 million Americans, nearly 1/3 of our nation’s population, had no health insurance for some or all of the past two years. Please let it sink in. It is shameful that roughly 10 million of these uninsured are children. 90% of those kids live in working households, and a majority in two-parent families, who simply cannot afford health coverage. Six million children are in imminent danger of losing their coverage if Congress fails to re-authorize CHIP. Now we’ve heard many things this evening, and that is — you stoop to conquer, you accuse the Democrats and Republicans who support this legislation of wanting to do this for illegals, and then you accuse the Republicans and Democrats who support this legislation of supporting socialized medicine. And that wasn’t bad enough, you went to the next thing: you accused Democrats and Republicans of encouraging smoking. And then you said that we want to aid the rich and comfort the rich. Read the legislation. This is good legislation for America. Help the children for a change.” |