sign-on in support of the Kucinich bill

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

To sign your organization to the following letter, send an email saying
that you wish to sign on to the letter in support of the Kucinich bill,
with the name of organization, city & state to:

signon@rtk.net

Please do so by Monday, October 18.

-Robert Naiman, Preamble Center

-------------

Congressman Dennis Kucinich
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Representative Kucinich:

On behalf of the undersigned organizations, we write to thank you for
introducing H.R. 2939, the "Debt Relief and IMF Reform Act of 1999," and
to offer our support of this very important legislation.

We support the Saxton-Kucinich bill because:

1) We support 100% cancellation of the debts owed by impoverished
countries to the IMF, as called for by the Saxton-Kucinich bill.  Neither
the Administration proposal nor the Leach bill would meet this fundamental
demand which is also shared by the international Jubilee 2000 movement.

2) We call for IMF to cancel this debt from its own resources.  We have
long known, as has been reconfirmed by the recent GAO report, that the IMF
has plenty of resources to cancel debt. The IMF has to bear the burden of
its mistakes in making bad loans and giving poor advice, and we must
ensure that no proposals increase its capacity to impose destructive
economic policies on poor countries.

3) We demand an end to the imposition of IMF "structural adjustment"
policies on impoverished countries. The Saxton-Kucinich bill would break
the current link between multilateral "debt relief" and compliance with
IMF structural adjustment; moreover, it would close the IMF's "Enhanced
Structural Adjustment Facility" (ESAF), which is the mechanism by which
the IMF has imposed its destructive policies. We reject any role for the
IMF in dictating the economic policies of impoverished countries. The IMF
unilaterally adopted this role without mandate or competence and has
caused massive economic and social destruction in indebted countries. We
reject recent purported "reforms" of ESAF as cosmetic rather than
substantive.

4) The Saxton-Kucinich bill recognizes that Congress only has one tool to
reform the IMF that has ever worked: the power of the purse.  The IMF has
proved that they are willing to say anything to get their hands on more
U.S. tax dollars, but the promised reform never materializes. It is long
past time to insist that IMF reforms precede U.S. funding, rather than
giving more money in exchange for rhetorical and vague promises.

5) We note the endorsement of Jubilee South for the Saxton-Kucinich bill.
If the ostensible purpose of "debt relief" is to help poor people in
impoverished countries, we should listen to what people in these countries
are saying. They are not saying that they want the IMF to have more power
over their countries. They are saying that they want the IMF to have less
power and they want the IMF out of their countries.

6) By including Haiti among the countries whose debts the IMF is required
to cancel, the Saxton-Kucinich bill recognizes that the scope of the
IMF-World Bank "HIPC initiative" is insufficient.

As the Saxton-Kucinich bill recognizes, removal of the IMF as "gatekeeper"
for "debt relief" is essential to any meaningful resolution of the
decades-old debt crisis.  Of course, the United States should also cancel
the debts owed to it by the impoverished countries.  We urge you to work
to ensure that comprehensive debt relief legislation includes 100%
cancellation of bilateral debt owed by impoverished countries, as called
for by President Clinton, and that the process is de-linked from
structural adjustment programs.

Thank you again for your continued strong leadership on this critical
issue.


Sincerely,

50 Years is Enough Network 
Preamble Center 
Essential Action