Gregory Meeks: “in this day and age, when we look at the global economy and we look at how this Nation has developed and other nations…”

“in this day and age, when we look at the global economy and we look at how this Nation has developed and other nations, and yet we look at the continent of Africa and see how underdeveloped they are; and also in this day and age, when we realize how much smaller the world has become, I think it becomes that much more urgent that we increase the Development Fund for Africa by the $220 million that is requested by the Payne amendment. Once upon a time there was a line item initiative for the Africa development fund. That no longer exists. And when we look at how the cost of things are ever escalating, this request is actually very little. We talk about democracy and helping to democratize various countries in the continent of Africa. That is what this money is for, helping people have a form of government where they can grow and develop as we did. We should be able to have others benefit from our history and understand the mistakes that we made in the past so that they will not have to go through some of the same growing pains that we did. In fact, in this great country, with the prosperity that we now have, I think it is just the very little that we could do, this $220 million. That is not a lot of money when I think about some of the individual wealth of some people in this country. Some CEOs in this country have $220 million to use at their disposal. We are talking about $220 million for an entire continent of people. That is just pennies. Pennies.”