Every time ONE members meet with US Representative Spencer Bachus (R-AL), we always start our meeting by thanking him for his leadership on global poverty issues. As an original co-sponsor of the Jubilee Act in 1999, Rep. Bachus was in on the ground floor and has worked tirelessly on debt relief issues alongside Bono/DATA and Bread for the World, both founding members of the ONE Campaign to Make Poverty History.

When Rep. Bachus first championed debt relief in Congress, his colleagues didn’t “get it”.

“People on both sides of the aisle told me there was no political upside to this,” Bachus said in an interview at the time. Now, those same skeptics see just how forward thinking he was – not only has debt cancellation reduced poverty, improved health care and education, but it has also decreased poor countries dependency on foreign aid. This year, Rep. Bachus, in a bi-partisan effort with Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), introduced the Jubilee Act of 2007 – legislation that will further extend debt cancellation to the world’s poorest countries without imposing harmful economic reforms.

Earlier this year, Rep. Bachus joined Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) to also introduce the Education for All Act. Rep. Bachus recognizes the importance of education in ending the cycle of poverty and further sees education as “an investment in international security.” “Young people who are reading books aren’t building bombs,” Bachus said in an interview with the Birmingham News. He added, “The US has always succeeded because of the strength of our ideas. We need to fill the vacuum with a message of hope, not hate, in these countries. We can’t play educator to the world, but we can certainly come closer than being the policeman to the world.”

We ended the meeting by briefing Rep. Bachus on both the Growth Act and the Child Survival Act. He enthusiastically received the information and felt confident that these were both measures he could support. He promised an answer within the week!

When ONE members asked how we could help him, Rep. Bachus pointed out that letters to the editor are very effective. A point well taken and often heeded. For example, when ONE members were unable to get an in-district meeting with our senators during the August recess to discuss the Farm Bill, we wrote letters to the editor of the Birmingham News publicly stating our position. Even without a face-to-face visit with our senators, local ONE Campaigners were able to effectively communicate our viewpoint.

Many thanks to Rep. Bachus for his continued leadership.

[People in picture are: John Derrick, Elaine VanCleave, Rep. Spencer Bachus, Suzanne Martin, Mark Connell]

This entry was posted on Friday, August 17th, 2007 at 10:03 am and is filed under Rep. Spencer Bachus, Lobby Visits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.