News

CONGRESSMAN KOLBE: Dan, thank you very much for that introduction. What he didn't include in that was that he, when I came to Congress 15 years ago, Dan was an intern working here in Congress, and I got to know him as he was working with another member, and we became very good friends.

You can see that I've been stuck in my career. I'm still just a congressman, 15 years later, but Dan is now a director here, a governor of the Export Import Bank, so he's done extraordinarily well and I'm delighted to be here. I'm delighted to be, of course, with Senator Bumpers, and Ambassador Strauss. Welcome. It's very nice for me to have this opportunity to join with you.

This could be called a very large caucus, I guess, that you have here, and it makes me think of a story that my former colleague used to tell, Mo Udall, who was one of the great wits of the United States Congress, and he always used to describe what the difference between a caucus and a cactus was. He said, really, the only difference between the two is that in the caucus all the pricks are on the inside.

But that would exclude this caucus, I assure you. That would be a caucus of the Congress that he was, clearly had in mind there. I just want to take a few minutes today to share with you—and I know you'll get a go-ahead, and eat your food, and that's fine, I understand we'll have lots of clanking of plates being cleared, we're doing this in the interests of time.

Those of us who are in Congress learn this goes with the territory.

But I want to just take a few minutes to talk to you a little bit about the foreign policy issues, particularly as it relates to the Export Import Bank.

And I want to begin by saying that I'm sometimes struck by a great disconnect that I see between the members of Congress whose—and the perception that they have of the U.S. role in international affairs, and the reality of the global and political—global, political and economic environment that we operate in.

There's no doubt that today, the United States has emerged from the end of the Cold War as a clear victor, a victor in the economic and the political world, in that sense, but very often it seems that we don't act very much like a winner, or having won it, we shrink back and don't want to exercise the responsibility that we have as the winner of that conflict.

We need to face the challenges that this country have, and they're substantial, as we're seeing every day. We need to face these countries, head on.

I have a lot of confidence in the foreign policy team that has been assembled by President Bush. I think it has, brings a, a breath of fresh air, but also a tremendous amount of expertise and experience to it.

We have, as a result of this, I think, an unprecedented opportunity to help shape the future of the world as we move into the 21st Century, as the, both the political and strategic, on one hand, and the economic relationships between the powers of the world begin to shake out.

This is not a time that we can afford to let our policies and our politics tilt towards unilateralism, towards protectionism, or towards isolationism. We must, as a nation, be engaged in the world.

We must, as a nation, be engaged in the world.

Today's world economy pays very little attention to national borders, and that's a truism that those of you who are engaged in this business know far, far better than I do from the work that you do every day.

As the leader of the number one economy in the world, we need to provide an example as a nation that not only follows the rules of trade and investment, but happens to advance the cause of the private sector, and its ability to facilitate economic growth.

This is the only long-term solution to helping peoples in less-developed countries, those who are underprivileged, those who are poor. In the long run, this is the only real solution to the problems that the rest of the world face, is if we do this, to lift them out of the grinding poverty that so much of the world finds itself in today.

With private investment flows to developing countries, now drowning out official developing assistance from the U.S. and the rest of the donor community, I say—some say that it's time for the U.S. to catch up with more foreign aid.

Instead I say let's help countries with no access to private capital develop that capacity and give people jobs, raise the standard of living for people, and the Export Import Bank is the critical player, it seems to me, in the panoply of agencies and tools that we, as the United States Government, have available to us. They play the central role in making this happen.

Most governments in developing countries understand this. I was just down in Latin America last weekend, and when we were there, looking at the problems of the drug trafficking in Colombia, what was asked for by the president of Colombia was not for more cash aid, but for assistance in extending and expanding the Andean Trade Preference Act, to make it possible for textiles to come into the United States from Colombia.

We were in El Salvador and looking at the devastation of the earthquake there, and they also understand the need for more economic aid. They want an extension of the sugar quota, to get some of the sugar quota that the United States is not using with other foreign countries. They would like that made available to them.

So these countries understand that when they have their own economic and political problems, it is economic aid that can help get them out of the—it is the bootstrap that can lift them up.

Slowly, I think the United States Congress is beginning to understand that as well. For those who believe that the developing world has little relevance to their lives, I think they need to look into the future. Look at the number of asylum seekers, political, but mostly economic asylum seekers, who come to this country, day after day, year after year, crossing the border into the United States and looking for a better job here in this country, for a better life for themselves.

And this is true also in the European Union and some of the other developed areas of the world, but primarily the United States and the European Union.

Look at the future of United States companies and all those stockholders who already realize that these companies' long-term future is based on establishing markets in the developing world, whether that is China or whether it is going to be in India, or Romania, or in Dominican Republic.

Raising the standard of living of these countries directly benefits the United States in terms of reducing the amount of disruption that comes from illegal immigration into the United States.

Turning now to the current political strategy that we find ourselves in, I think we can say that the post-Cold War era is actually, paradoxically, perhaps, a more dangerous, and a more difficult place for people to operate.

There is no more good versus evil, no clear-cut distinction between right and wrong, between the First and the Second World. You don't have the issue of the two superpowers, that pretty much kept a clamp on the world, and making sure that nothing boiled up in some other location, or very rarely did it boil up, and then use the two superpowers, arranged to put the lid back on it.

Now, those superpowers are not there to do that in the rest of the world, and so there is a tendency for other parts of the world to feel free to allow their conflicts, whether they are political conflicts or economic conflicts, or social conflicts, to come to the surface, in a way that probably would have been unthinkable 15 or 20 years ago.

The world community is much more dynamic, and that can either strengthen stability or it can threaten stability.

We need to act in a way that assures that we strengthen the political and economic stability in the world, to mold this international community into a place that fosters stability and prosperity, but we have many areas that of course need our help in actually making that happen.

There is growing fundamentalism and terrorism that threatens many parts o