Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick: “I do not want us to lose sight on the importance of our country and who we are in the world. This is the greatest…”

“I do not want us to lose sight on the importance of our country and who we are in the world. This is the greatest country in the world in many respects. We are enjoying a surplus in a time when many in our country are living better than they have ever lived. At the same time, many do not live as well. This foreign operations budget, as has been said over and over today, is less than 1 percent of our total budget. When we talk about debt forgiveness, we do it all the time, with our own American citizens, and we should. The S&L bailout, as we remember. We forgave a lot of those debts and many of those people involved in that scandal are living very well today. I am not opposed to it; I want us to take our responsibility as citizens seriously, to look at the world and see the ones who need forgiveness at this time. We have a responsibility and an opportunity to give and forgive debt for some of the poorest countries, who have no idea and cannot pay that debt, were not responsible for it.”