Senate Endorses IMF Funding
House ties abortion to foreign policy bill
WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, March 26) -- In two key foreign policy votes Thursday, the Senate endorsed a measure to provide $17.9 billion in aid for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), while the House cleared a State Department bill that includes abortion restriction language.
The House passed by voice vote a $13 billion State Department authorization package that funds military operations in Bosnia and the Persian Gulf and approves an $819 million payment to the United Nations of owed back dues. The bill was held up over controversial provisions, most notably family-planning curbs.
President Bill Clinton has threatened to veto any legislation containing the abortion language. In a letter Thursday, House Speaker Newt Gingrich urged the president to "do the right thing" and sign the bill, reminding Clinton of his promise to repay the U.S. debt to the U.N.
"In your State of the Union Address, you told Congress that it's 'long past time to make good on our debt to the United Nations ... If we want America to lead, we've got to set a good example.' At this time, I urge you to set that good example," Gingrich wrote in a letter to Clinton Thursday.
The bill next goes to the Senate.
The Senate took a step closer Thursday to completing another supplemental spending package, voting 84-16 to add IMF aid to a bill providing money for disaster relief and U.S. troops abroad.
The Senate then completed work on the merged emergency spending bill, that would also allocate a total of $5 billion for assistance to areas hard-hit by the winter's storms and for foreign military operations. A final vote has been delayed until the House acts on its corresponding legislation, probably next week.
The Senate vote is a victory for the White House which requested aid for the IMF, whose coffers were drained by the recent Asian financial crisis. But it sets up a potential fight with the House GOP leadership which wants to deal with the IMF issue separately from disaster legislation.
But helping the international lending organization is necessary to preserving America's economic health, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) argued, calling the Asian crisis the "El Niño of economics."
Referring to the Dow Jones industrial average's flirtation with the 9,000 point mark, Stevens said, "If we don't act, the country better get ready for a slide on that."
Travelling in Africa, Clinton issued a statement praising the Senate's support for the IMF measure, saying the money would give the agency "resources it needs to help stabilize Asian economies."
The package includes $3.4 billion for IMF loan guarantees and $14.5 billion for the U.S. portion of IMF reserves.
Following negotiations between Republicans and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, the Senate legislation includes conditions on the IMF money that would urge the world's major industrial nations to work to reform IMF loan practices and for the IMF to abide by international trade agreements.
A House version places harsher restrictions on the IMF loan that have been criticized by the White House and House Democrats.
Despite the House agreement in the approved State Department bill to pay the United States' U.N. arrears, Senate approval of the move seems unlikely any time soon.
Wednesday, on a 90-10 vote, the chamber approved a nonbinding measure calling on the U.N. to factor into its calculation of the United States' debt the money it has spent enforcing Security Council resolutions since 1990.
Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), who offered the measure, said U.S. costs in confronting Saddam Hussein in Iraq and for peacekeeping operations in Bosnia equalled $3 billion in 1997 alone, far surpassing the country's U.N. debt. The U.N. figure of $1.2 billion in owed back dues is "money which we do not owe and should never pay," Helms said.
"Yet the U.N. crybabies continue to whine," Helms said.
The Senate resolution calls on U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson to introduce a Security Council resolution demanding a full accounting of U.S. costs of "implementing or supporting" U.N. Security Council resolutions since Jan. 1, 1990.
CNN's Ann Curley and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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