IMF Trumps Women's Lives in Budget Deal (fwd)

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

Robert Naiman
Sunday Journal, metro DC
November 28th, 1999

"On the Left"
IMF Trumps Women's Lives in Budget Deal

By their budget deal shall ye know them. Last week Clinton-
Gore Administration officials showed that expanding such 
corporate-dominated institutions as the International Monetary 
Fund and the World Bank is far more important to them than 
concerns of the electorate that put them in office. And the  
Congressional leadership as well as the White House showed 
that despite posturing about fiscal discipline there is nothing 
they love better than a year-end budget deal where the horses 
can be traded far from public scrutiny.

High on the Administration's agenda was winning more 
resources for the International Monetary Fund. The IMF is a 
Treasury bureaucrat's dream -- a "magnificent bureaucracy," in 
the words of its top official. It operates largely in secret, and 
allows a few officials to run the economies of over 50 countries 
with little interference from the people who happen to live 
there. But the IMF's power derives largely from its money, and 
Congress is reluctant to provide more. Moreover, public debate 
over more resources for the IMF undermines the IMF's ability 
to function secretly. 

To get money for the IMF, the Administration swapped the 
ability of U.S.-funded international family planning groups to 
advocate for abortion rights. It's a tragic irony that Republicans 
would trade more resources for the IMF for restrictions on 
abortion. Thousands of babies and their mothers die during 
childbirth each year in developing countries because their 
governments are forced by the IMF to cut spending on health 
care and education.

There's no better way than a year-end budget deal to get more 
resources for the IMF. The Administration claimed the money 
was for debt relief for poor countries, but it was really a 
bailout of the IMF's failed programs.

The Republican leadership had promised there would be no 
"omnibus" spending bill: each of the annual appropriations bills 
would be passed separately. But temptation proved too great. 
Five of the 13 bills were combined, accounting for more than 
60% of this year's non-entitlement spending. Bundling the 
spending bills centralizes power in the Congressional leadership 
and the White House, meeting behind closed doors. Elements of 
the package are impossible to remove, so it's a great way to 
pass controversial provisions. Most Members of Congress can 
deny responsibility. Few voters will have the patience or 
knowledge to decipher the meaning of a few sentences buried 
in the back pages of a good newspaper to find out what really 
happened.

And in return for funding the Empire Republicans got a long-
sought prize. Since the beginning of the Clinton-Gore 
Administration, House Republicans sought to restore Reagan-
Bush era restrictions on the activities of international family 
planning groups. It was already illegal to use U.S. funds to  
provide abortion overseas -- what anti-abortion activists 
sought was to bar U.S.-funded groups from promoting abortion 
with other resources.

This was a rare issues of concern to Democratic voters that the 
Clinton-Gore Administration had stood firm on. There's much 
ambivalence among many potential Democratic voters about 
the Clinton-Gore Administration, which, far from being 
"spineless" about many issues of liberal concern, has shown 
that it simply has different priorities than the average 
Democratic voter, who never signed off on the Clinton 
Administration's huge giveaways to corporate power. This 
ambivalence can be costly to Democratic candidates, whose 
voters don't always show up at the polls.

Standing firm for abortion rights mobilizes many Democratic 
voters, who strongly fear that women's ability to control their 
lives and their bodies will be trampled by right-wing religious 
fanatics. To double-cross their base on this issue, you have to 
figure that the Clinton Administration officials put a very high 
priority on what they were getting in return.

One may disagree with the goals of Representative Chris Smith 
and his band of anti-abortion activists in the House. But you 
can't knock their determination. Six years ago they put down 
their marker, and have battled relentlessly, single-mindedly 
for victory. What if we had more progressive Democrats like 
that? What if House Democrats said no to more money for the 
IMF until it stops busting unions and crushing the poor 
overseas? What would happen if they said no to importing the 
products of child labor, said no to free trade agreements with 
countries where union organizers are shot down like dogs, and 
said no to expanding the WTO, which overturns our 
environmental laws? Will we ever know?