Excerpt: Indeed, Richard Armey, the number two House Republican, earlier this year turned away suggestions that he visit Europe or Asia to see how the IMF functions. ''I have not traveled outside the United States since 1986,'' he told reporters. ''I've been to Europe once. I don't have to go again.''
Another choice excerpt: More than half of House members were elected after the Soviet Union collapsed, meaning they never shouldered the policy burdens of the Cold War. As recently as a decade ago, Congress had a large complement of World War II veterans, people who had visited foreign lands in times of crisis. Among House freshman today, about one in five has served in the armed forces, notes Norman Ornstein, a political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.
''A number of them flaunt the fact that they don't have passports, and use that as a signal that they are focusing on issues of importance to their constituencies,'' Scowcroft said.
Gotta luv those
Republican/Christian Coalition
know nothing,
isolationist,
xenophobic,
racist,
Millennial-fearing,
apocalypse-hoping
passport-hating
fools.
And we're supposed to be world leaders?
boston.com
Critics taking aim at bailout work of IMF
By Aaron Zitner, Globe Staff, 10/07/98
ASHINGTON - Shocked by the descent of developing nations into
poverty and by tumbling stock markets in wealthy ones, much of the
world is placing its faith in a group of international agencies meeting here
this week to craft a solution to the global economic turmoil.
President Clinton yesterday told two of those agencies, the International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank, that they have been ''vital to the
prosperity of the world.'' On Monday, he told a separate body of 22
nations that its work on the global crisis is ''perhaps the most important
work the world can be doing at this moment in history.''
And yet in Congress, skepticism toward international agencies like these
is at one of its highest points since World War II.
Today, while the IMF and World Bank continue their meetings,
lawmakers only a few miles away will highlight the
perceived failings of the IMF at a public hearing. The Republican-led
Congress is deep into a debate with Clinton over whether the United
States should pay $18 billion in commitments to the IMF. While
Congress moved closer to deal last night, Congress has so far said big
reforms are needed before it turns over the money.
Lawmakers have also rebuffed Clinton's effort to pay back dues to the
United Nations. And distrust of free trade with Canada and Mexico has
prompted Congress to deny Clinton, on two separate occasions, ''fast
track'' powers that have helped every president since Gerald Ford
negotiate new trade treaties.
''There has always been a split in the Republican Party between those
who believe in engagement with the rest of the world and those who
believe in insularity,'' said Michael Krepon, president of the Henry L.
Stimson Center, a policy research group.
''Now, this split is heightened. At a time when we need to engineer a new
type of engagement abroad or reform the old architecture, we don't have
any master builders on Capitol Hill, particularly in the Republican Party,''
Krepon said.
Even some prominent Republicans are dismayed. ''We've got a crisis on
our hands right now, and it seems we ought to deal with it before it
becomes a worldwide recession,'' said Brent Scowcroft, the retired Air
Force general and national security adviser to President Bush. ''Then we
can say, 'OK, how do we restructure our international financial
institutions?'''
Republican lawmakers bristle at any suggestion that they don't see the
world in its fullness. ''We are not trying to be isolationist,'' said
Representative Jim Saxton, a New Jersey Republican who leads the
House-Senate Joint Economic Committee. ''We want the IMF to work,
and we are trying to evaluate its strong and weak points and do
something about them.''
But the holdup in IMF funding threatens to undermine the credibility of
US finance officials trying to find a solution to the global financial crisis.
For example, Kiichi Miyazawa, the Japanese finance minister, responded
to Clinton's proposal for a new IMF program last week with a version of
the American challenge: Put up or shut up.
Proposals for a new program ''would not be very convincing unless the
United States's commitments to the IMF are lived up to,'' he said.
To be sure, the Democratic Party sometimes seems equally split on
whether to support global institutions and free trade. Its liberal wing,
including Representatives Barney Frank of Newton and Joseph Kennedy
II of Brighton, helped kill Clinton's ''fast track'' plans last year, and they
said the IMF should not have offered aid to the likes of Indonesia while
its president kept a prominent labor leader in jail.
But today, senior Democrats are pushing for full funding of the IMF,
while some senior Republicans are leading the charge to block it.
To some watching the developments, disputes like these stem from a
general decline in interest in foreign affairs. ''A lot of the newly elected
congressmen came to Washington with a specific domestic agenda, be it
right-to-life, a balanced budget, welfare reform,'' Scowcroft said.
''Foreign policy is a distraction for them.''
More than half of House members were elected after the Soviet Union
collapsed, meaning they never shouldered the policy burdens of the Cold
War. As recently as a decade ago, Congress had a large complement of
World War II veterans, people who had visited foreign lands in times of
crisis. Among House freshman today, about one in five has served in the
armed forces, notes Norman Ornstein, a political scientist at the
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.
''A number of them flaunt the fact that they don't have passports, and use
that as a signal that they are focusing on issues of importance to their
constituencies,'' Scowcroft said.
Indeed, Richard Armey, the number two House Republican, earlier this
year turned away suggestions that he visit Europe or Asia to see how the
IMF functions. ''I have not traveled outside the United States since
1986,'' he told reporters. ''I've been to Europe once. I don't have to go
again.''
Today, the Joint Economic Committee holds its fourth hearing this year
on the IMF, a 182-nation agency that was created after World War II.
The IMF is charged with boosting the global trade in goods by easing the
occasional disruptions that develop in the system of global currency
exchanges, sometimes by offering short-term loans to member nations.
The IMF has helped piece together rescue loans for four Asian nations
that were swept into the economic crisis, now 16 months old, and it is
working on other deals with Russia and Brazil. The loans to South
Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia alone totaled $117 billion, of which
about one-third came from the IMF itself and the rest came from
individual nations or other agencies and development banks.
Of the $18 billion that Clinton wants for the IMF, the House Republican
leadership so far has agreed to only $3.4 billion, which would pay the
US share of a new emergency fund. The remaining $14.5 billion would
be part of a larger international effort to replenish existing programs that
have been strained by the recent bailouts. Senate Republicans are
generally more supportive of IMF funding than are their counterparts in
the House.
In general, the Clinton administration shares one of the key criticisms of
the Republicans who want to block IMF funding. Both groups say the
IMF needs to reveal more about its workings, including the terms of its
loans to nations and the economic health of its members. But the
administration seems more willing to accept the claims of IMF officials
that they have already taken steps in this direction.
Republican critics of the IMF also say the agency's rescue loans to
nations are counterproductive. Investors should know that stocks and
loans to companies in emerging nations are risky. The IMF, with its
packages that help bail out lenders, encourages investors to take on
undue risk and lend too much money in emerging nations - money that
cannot be repaid.
Among other things, Republican critics want the IMF to end subsidized
interest rates and set a one-year limit on all loans. While some
lawmakers said a compromise was in the works to ensure the funding,
the war of words on the issue continued yesterday.
Referring to the IMF's role in the economic crisis, Clinton told the annual
IMF/World Bank meeting yesterday: ''We can debate how to reform the
operations of the fire department, but there is no excuse for refusing to
supply the fire department with water while the fire is burning.''
To which Saxton later answered: ''Maybe the fire trucks should stop
pumping gasoline on the fire.''
This story ran on page D01 of the Boston Globe on 10/07/98.
© Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.
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