Nancy Pelosi: “Mr. Speaker, yesterday, 40,000 people died of starvation and inadequate medical care. Today, 40,000 people will die.…”

“Mr. Speaker, yesterday, 40,000 people died of starvation and inadequate medical care. Today, 40,000 people will die. Tomorrow, I believe we will significantly reduce those numbers because of the debt relief provisions within this bill. About 2 weeks ago, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi); the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters); the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Leach); and the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus); and myself met with President Clinton and a representative of the National Catholic Bishops Conference, the president of Bread for The World, the Reverend Andy Young, and the Reverend Pat Robertson, and the White House; and we said that the most important foreign policy initiative for the new millennium would be the full funding of debt relief for the highly impoverished countries of the world. Mr. Speaker, everyone should support this, the most important foreign policy initiative for the new millennium. Nothing that Congress has done this year has the potential to do so much good so quickly as passage of debt relief funding.”