Senator Dodd calls on world to drop Haiti’s debt

Jan 21st, 2010 5:36 PM UTC
By Chris Scott

On the floor of the Senate this afternoon, Senator Chris Dodd (CT) announced that he, along with Senator Richard Lugar (IN) intend to introduce legislation instructing the Secretary Geithner to work with other nations to forgive Haiti’s outstanding international debt.

Key excerpt (roughly transcribed, emphasis mine):

Therefore, it’s critical that we work with the Haitian authorities in that nation and others to build and reform the institutions, to bolster the rule of law in Haiti that will be necessary to lift Haitians out of poverty, rebuild the country and attract and maintain foreign direct investment to jump-start that nation’s economy.

Throughout this process, we must not get bogged down by old formulas and hardened ways of doing business as usual. We must think outside the box, as the expression goes, marshal the next resources and creativity of our friends from the region.

And the Haitian people must devise and be a part of a medium-and long-term strategy nor this effort. To that end, Senator Lugar of Indiana and I, the former chairman of the committee, will be introducing legislation shortly to all in help to speed Haiti’s recovery by instructing the Secretary of the Treasury to work with other nations and to relieve Haiti of their outstanding international debt, including the debt incurred through 2011. That ought to be something that every nation agrees to do. In the absence of which I don’t know how you can ever talk about economic recovery to saddle a country that doesn’t have a government today to meet those obligations. Our legislation will help to spur economic activity which is essential if we’re going to have any kind of a recovery process.

Here’s the video:

TAGS: Earthquake in Haiti, Haiti, ONE, Sen. Chris Dodd