Mark Kennedy: “I share his great concern with the fact that half the people in this world live on less than $2 a day, that half the…”

“I share his great concern with the fact that half the people in this world live on less than $2 a day, that half the people in this world have not made a phone call, that one-fifth of the people do not have safe drinking water, and that 115 million children do not have a school to go to. We need to, with this crisis out there, have a razor-sharp focus on results, not dollars spent. We need to demand results from our aid programs, not try to comfort ourselves by saying that we spent some dollars on certain programs. What this amendment does is it takes $425 million out of our contribution for this year to the World Bank, which has a poor track record of delivering results. The World Bank is far too much focused on process, as opposed to performance. They might record how many schools they built, but they are not focusing on how many children we have really educated. They may focus on what water treatments they have helped fund but not on how many families are really getting clean water from them. They already do have sufficient capital to expand their programs. We put this money, $90 million of it, into the global AIDS initiative, which has a proven track record. It meets this year's commitment of our $15 billion plan that we have approved as a Congress.”