John W. Olver: “This has been, at times, an ugly debate; but then we should not expect anything else. This is an ugly bill. There are…”

“This has been, at times, an ugly debate; but then we should not expect anything else. This is an ugly bill. There are multiple reasons to oppose this legislation, and I do oppose it. But the utter callousness of the cuts in what is really a very modest debt relief funding that has been asked by the administration, by the President of the United States, is reason enough to oppose the legislation. The President asked for $472 million for debt relief program for this year, and that was cut by 82 percent to a total of $82 million. That is even more than a one-third cut from what was made available last year in the area of debt relief. Now, Mr. Chairman, it may be folly to try to find what is common ground in a situation like this, but I do think that we can probably all agree that there are some, maybe many developing nations that have experienced declining economic conditions while accumulating higher levels of debt which are largely owed to the international lending institutions, the multilateral public lending agencies, the IMF, the World Bank, also to foreign governments, and the U.S. Government.”