Helping Impoverished Nations

I have led congressional efforts to cancel the debts of the world’s poorest countries so that they can use their limited resources to reduce poverty, build schools, improve health care, create jobs and make other investments to better the lives of their citizens instead of making burdensome debt and interest payments to rich nations and multilateral financial institutions.

Over the past ten years more than 20 of the world’s poorest countries have had their debts cancelled, and I have proposed making additional low-income countries eligible.

I have also introduced legislation to protect impoverished countries from lawsuits by “vulture funds’ – unscrupulous and exploitative investors who buy up debts of poor countries for pennies on the dollar and then sue to recover the original value of the debts plus interest.