Nita Lowey: “I applaud the spirit of the gentleman's amendment and regret that I cannot support it in this context. We have worked…”

“I applaud the spirit of the gentleman's amendment and regret that I cannot support it in this context. We have worked hard to bring a bill to the floor under a requirement to reduce the President's request by $1.9 billion. And so in order to accomplish this, we were forced to make, as you know, many tough choices, and reducing funding for the Global Environmental Facility of the World Bank, unfortunately, was one of them. I have always worked hard to get adequate funding for the GEF because I believe it provides a vital source of funds for environmentally sound lending. The bill does provide $107.5 million for the GEF, which is the amount of our annual contribution. As you know, we did not include the additional $13 million requested for arrears and that is reflected in the funding levels of other banks as well. It would be my hope that we could find a way to make up these arrears either in conference on this year's bill or next year. I know of the gentleman's commitment to GEF. I share that commitment. And I want to assure you of my intention to work towards this goal. I thank you for bringing this issue to the attention of my colleagues.”