Exodus From Hunger by David Beckmann

U.S. Congress to approve unconditional debt cancellation. Discussions in my office contributed to the eventual solution—debt reduction for countries with credible poverty reduction strategies.
    The Clinton administration wasn’t initially interested, and we had no supporters in Congress. But church people in Birmingham, Alabama, recruited an unlikely champion: Representative Spencer Bachus.
    Pat Pelham was a young mother in Birmingham. She was moved during her morning prayers to do something for people in Africa. Her husband’s job and two small children put going to Africa out of the question. A minister at her church, Independent Presbyterian, suggested she get their church involved in Bread for the World. Pat and her friend Elaine Van Cleave came to a meeting with me at Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church. Father Martin Muller had invited me to speak.
    Pat and Elaine organized a hunger committee at Independent Presbyterian. They invited their member of Congress, Spencer Bachus, to an evening event. I sat on his left, and a church member who chairs the local Republican Party sat on his right.
    Several years later, at the beginning of 1999, Bachus was appointed chair of the international subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee. If Congress was going to approve debt relief for poor countries, it would have to start in Bachus’s subcommittee.
    I called Pat right away. Our Lady of Sorrows asked people to sign a petition the next Sunday. Pat, Elaine, and two friends from their church flew to Washington at their own expense to bring the petition and talk with Representative Bachus.
    Elaine explained why they had come. “I don’t know much about economics or international finance,” she began. “But I do know that tens of thousands of children die every day from hunger and other preventable causes. As a mother, that really bothers me. Most of the time, I think there is nothing we can do about it. But it would help a lot if you would sponsor this Jubilee legislation.”
    Bachus became Congress’s most effective advocate for debt relief for the world’s poorest countries.
    The Jubilee campaign was strong in Europe, so the Clinton administration was also under pressure from other governments in the G8, the club of the world’s eight most powerful economies. But Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers told me twice that the support of Spencer Bachus, a conservative Republican, convinced him to urge President Clinton to support poor-country debt cancellation.
    Bachus is a Southern Baptist. He believes in heaven and hell. At one hearing on poor-country debt, Bachus said, “If we don’t write off some of this debt, poor people in these countries will be suffering for the rest of their lives—and we’ll be suffering a lot longer than that.”
    He held up a statement from Pope John Paul II and said, “I haven’t read much by Catholics before, but I don’t know how any Christian could read what the pope is saying here and not agree that we need to do something about the debt of these countries.”
    Representative Jim Leach, a moderate Republican from Iowa, also provided crucial leadership. He chaired the entire Financial Services Committee. Bread for the World staff couldn’t get in to see him. His staff insisted that the chairman was preoccupied with more important legislation.
    But Tom Booker and other Bread for the World members got an appointment with Leach back home in Iowa City. Their appointment was late in the day, and Leach was running late. So Leach invited Tom to ride with him to the airport. Tom was not at all sure of himself, but he explained the idea of Jubilee.
    When staff from Bread for the World and two church bodies finally got in to see Leach in Washington a month later, Leach immediately offered to sponsor the legislation. Leach’s staffer was sitting next to me and literally almost fell off his chair in surprise.
    The Financial Services Committee passed the debt-relief bill two weeks