The Bush Administration's Political Vision of Governance

As prepared for delivery

I'd like to thank Tulane's Stone Center for Latin American Studies for hosting me this evening and Dr. Huck in particular for organizing this event. I am greatly pleased to have this opportunity to be here with you in New Orleans, in this great city of hope and renewal.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, nations from the Western Hemisphere rushed to our aid. The outpouring of assistance and good will was unprecedented. In all, we accepted offers of material and monetary assistance from 120 countries, political entities and international organizations. The donations varied. For example, Chile gave us sheets and blankets, diapers, and small bandages. Trinidad and Tobago pledged $2 million to NGOs. Mexico sent 45 truckloads of supplies. The Dominican Republic, host of the next OAS General Assembly, pledged funding. The Organization of American States made a contribution from the OAS Emergency Fund, and was the first international organization to approve a resolution expressing solidarity with the United States.

We, in the United States, also look to help our friends in times of need. The United States is the world's largest donor of emergency humanitarian relief. We are also the world's largest donor of official development assistance, and are deeply committed to helping the world's poor. In fact, no single country can match our record in this regard. In Latin America alone, the Bush administration has doubled its official foreign assistance since coming into office ($862,452,000 in FY2001 to $1,819,423,000 in FY2005), and the figure has tripled since 1997 ($681,426,000).

Our policy in this Hemisphere is rooted in the link between democracy and development. In the Western Hemisphere, you cannot have the one without the other.

Democracy needs to be strengthened by economic systems that serve peoples' primary interest: jobs and opportunities for their families-and social safety nets for the poorest.

Yes, there is frustration in the region today. People say, "Why hasn't democracy yet delivered the benefits to me?" "Why haven't the market-based reforms drastically reduced poverty and inequality?"

But the response is not less democracy, but more. And more development that will only come with smart policies, trustworthy institutions, and security for citizens.

That is why U.S. policy in the region is to "work with our partners in the Americas to generate broad-based growth through freer trade and sound economic policies; to invest in the well-being of people from all walks of life; and to make democracy serve every citizen more effectively and justly." If we do this, we will lower poverty and improve the quality of life of people in this Hemisphere-in measurable ways.

These policies not only have clear bipartisan support in the United States, but wide acceptance throughout the Hemisphere. It was clearly reflected in the "Monterrey Consensus" adopted at the International Conference on Financing for Development in 2002. The Monterrey Consensus states that those countries that implement sound economic policies, promote good governance, and strengthen the rule of law will receive the support of the international community.

That is why the President proposed a concrete mechanism to implement this compact starting with the poorest countries in the Hemisphere-the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA). Congress provided nearly $1 billion in initial funding for FY04 and $1.5 billion for FY05. The President has requested $3 billion for FY06 and pledged to increase annual funding for the MCA to $5 billion in the future.

Last year, the United States signed MCA compacts with Honduras and Nicaragua for $215 million and $175 million respectively. Last month, Paraguay's $34.7 million MCA Threshold Program to fight corruption was approved by the MCC Board of Directors.

Let's take a closer look at each element of the Bush administration's policy.

Working with our partners in the Americas

We start off by "working with our partners in the Americas." Who are those partners? What type of partnership will we have? We are willing to work on mature, constructive, mutually beneficial relationships with every democratic government in the region.

Beware the old descriptions "left" and "right" which really today no longer have much meaning. Let me quote from Secretary of State Rice's remarks to the inaugural session of last year's OAS General Assembly. She said, "The divide in the Americas today is not between governments from the Left or the Right. It is between those governments that are elected and govern democratically-and those that do not."

We have strong partnerships with strong responsible leaders in a range of governments from Brazil to Colombia to Chile to Uruguay and all the Central American countries.

We also have new partners at multilateral institutions. We are working with the dynamic Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza at the OAS to promote strong democratic institutions, and we are in conversations with Luis Alberto Moreno of the IDB on how best to promote economic opportunity for all the Hemisphere's citizens.

We also have strong non-governmental partners. We are also working to bolster the voice of civil society networks, such as the 380 member Inter-American Democracy Network, in their efforts to promote accountability and transparency in their governments. And we are also working in partnership with a vibrant private sector, which is the true engine of growth, job creation, and poverty reduction in our societies.

Through Freer Trade

We view free and fair trade as a primary vehicle to create jobs and to fight poverty in the region.

The Western Hemisphere is the most active region in this administration's trade agenda. We trade more with this region than we do with the European Union or China or Japan. We have signed agreements with Canada and Mexico, Chile, the countries of Central America and the Dominican Republic, and recently closed deals with Peru and Colombia. In all, this represents over 85% of our trade with the Hemisphere. We are still in the process of negotiating with Panama and Ecuador.

Free and fair trade has already brought measurable results to give people new opportunities. Trade among the NAFTA partners has increased from $289 billion in 1993 to $725 billion in 2004, an increase of 150%. Our agreement with Chile is also showing signs of success. In the first year of the agreement with Chile (2004), U.S. exports to Chile increased by 33 percent and U.S. imports from Chile increased nearly 28%.

President Bush is also committed to a successful partnership with Central America. He made the case for CAFTA-DR because he believes that free and fair trade bolsters liberty in young democracies in our Hemisphere.

CAFTA-DR entered into force in El Salvador on March 1. We are working intensively with our partners in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic to secure entry into force as quickly as possible, on a rolling basis.

We are also continuing the effort to achieve FTAA. At Mar del Plata, all but one country re-affirmed the importance of moving forward with trade liberalization, with 29 countries supporting rapid progress, and 4 saying conditions were not yet set for FTAA. As agreed at Mar del Plata, Colombia is conducting informal consultations with all FTAA participants on how to move negotiations forward.

Through Sound Economic Policies That Provide Opportunities

Free and fair trade is only one aspect of sound economic policies that provide opportunities.

A recent World Bank report states that "poverty may, in fact, be part of the reason for a region's poor growth performance." In other words, low growth is a cause of high poverty, but also high poverty is a cause of low growth. It's a two way street.

If this true, we shouldn't forget the first half of this equation: we should not diminish the importance of pro-growth policies.

So what does it take to grow? Is there some kind of revolutionary new hypothesis? At the very front of the Summit's political Declaration, which I remind you, took place in November 2005, only 5 months ago, leaders declared:

"we are committed to continuing the implementation of sound macroeconomic policies geared toward maintaining high growth rates, full employment, prudent fiscal and monetary policies, appropriate exchange rate policies, sound public debt management policies, and working to diversify economic activity and improve competitiveness."

We also wholeheartedly agree on the need to fight poverty. According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean's 2005 statistics, approximately 40.6% of citizens in Latin America and the Caribbean are living in poverty. And we agree with our partners in the region that this is unacceptable. So what should goverments do about it?

The latest World Bank Doing Business Report says, "People know how to escape poverty. What they need is to find a decent job. Studies confirm this-the vast majority of people who escape from poverty do so by starting their own business or finding work in an existing one."

So what can governments do to generate jobs, or help people find them?

For one, it can cut the bureaucratic red-tape for micro, small and medium-size enterprises, which represent 98% of the firms in this Hemisphere. At the Special Summit of the Americas in Nuevo Leon, governments agreed to significantly reduce the time and cost to start a business. In the 22 Western Hemisphere countries (excluding the U.S. and Canada), the average time of starting a business has been reduced from 71 days in 2004 to 63 days in 2005.

So progress is slow, but there are some signs of success. For instance, after USAID Jamaica helped to strengthen the web-based capabilities of Jamaica's Office of the Registrar of Companies (2003), the number of days required to register a business in Jamaica was reduced from 31 in 2003 to 9 days in 2005.

What else can governments do?

We would like to recognize governments like Brazil for "Bolsa Familia", Mexico for "Oportunidades", Chile for "Chile Solidario," and Colombia for "Familias en Accion:" innovative, well-targeted, incentive-based programs that combine fiscal transfers to the poor with the condition that they will use this cash to build human capital through investments in health and education.

Brazil's "Bolsa Familia" now reaches over 8 million families. For example, a woman from Ocara, in northeast Brazil, can receive up to 95 reais a month, but she must have her children vaccinated, their health monitored, and keep them in school.

In Mexico, "Oportunidades" reaches close to 5 million people. Payments are made to female heads of household once every 2 months; she receives money for school supplies and transportation to and from school. However, if the child misses more than 15% of classes, or fails a grade twice, the payments are suspended.

Invest in the well-being of people from all walks of life

We are also committed to "investing in the well-being of people from all walks of life." This includes access to quality job training, education, and health care for our citizens.

Last year alone, U.S.-funded training programs within the United States and abroad provided needed job skills to more than 268,000 individuals from the developing world.

It also includes training teachers to provide quality education to our children. In our Hemisphere, one of President Bush's first international initiatives was the launching of the Centers for Excellence in Teacher Training in the Western Hemisphere at the Third Summit of the Americas in 2001. These regional Centers-one in Jamaica, one in Honduras and one in Peru-have improved and updated the skills of more than 12,500 public school teachers who educate more than 400,000 students throughout the hemisphere.

Just as economic prosperity and social justice cannot be achieved without education, the Bush Administration understands the importance of a healthy populace in realizing these goals. Working together with our partners in our Hemisphere, we have surpassed regional targets by providing anti-retroviral therapy to more than 640,000 people in the Americas who need it.

And to make democracy serve every citizen more effectively and justly

Democratically elected governments also have an obligation to restore public confidence in governmental institutions. One particularly important way is to prosecute current and former government officials who have been involved in corruption. It should be recalled that at the Special Summit in Nuevo Leon, leaders agreed to deny safe haven to corrupt officials, those who corrupt them, and their assets. And it is the responsibility of all elected leaders to do that.

I guess rather than look from left to right, I am more concerned about a bottom-up approach to democracy. We believe that if localities and mayors create the right incentives, and create forums to work with civil society organizations and the private sector, their communities can thrive. Consistent with our idea of grassroots, local development, at the Summit of the Americas, President Bush announced the creation of five "opportunity zones" in the Americas. These "opportunity zones", based on a similar concept to the Gulf Opportunity Zone here in New Orleans, through more effective public and private cooperation, encourage new business ownership, and should help the most disadvantaged citizens.

It is important to note how far the region has come in the last two decades, when citizens can express themselves politically and leaders are elected-including an indigenous leader as president of his own country-through "el arma del voto," and not "el voto de las armas."

Also rather than looking from left to right, as U.S. Ambassador to the OAS, I am also interested in the role of the top-down: how relevant multilateral institutions can help to hold governments accountable. President Bush believes in multilateralism, but in relevant multilateralism. Multilateralism that delivers concrete, measurable results, not rhetoric. Indeed, multilateral diplomacy is an essential, indeed a vital, component of our policy in the Western Hemisphere.

We are working through the OAS, and the Democratic Charter, to promote good governance in various ways:

• The OAS has become the principal electoral observation and monitoring entity in the hemisphere, with stringent, evolving standards to ensure universal access throughout the hemisphere's "hot spots." In 2006, we anticipate that the OAS will conduct electoral observation missions in as many as 16 member states;
• Through our support for OAS special missions, acting under the Democratic Charter, to address internal political conflicts, in such countries as Haiti;
• Through our role as the largest financial supporter of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), and through its thorough country reports on the human rights situation in countries throughout the region, including Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti, Guatemala and Colombia.
• By addressing the war on transnational organized crime-including terrorism and national security-multilaterally through the Inter-American Committee against Terrorism (CICTE). Among other activities, CICTE works to formulate proposals in drafting appropriate counterterrorism legislation; develops activities for training and crisis management; and enhances border cooperation and travel documentation security measures.
• Advancing our ongoing effort to combat drug trafficking and drug abuse in the Americas through Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD)-the principal venue for counter-narcotics cooperation-and its Multilateral Evaluation Mechanism (MEM), where experts from countries evaluate each other;

The Declaration of Florida, "Delivering the Benefits of Democracy," is a multilateral commitment to advance the hemisphere's democratic agenda. Among the important achievements set forth in the document, it:

• Tasked the new, dynamic Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza to propose initiatives to strengthen application of the Inter-American Democratic Charter to address threats to democracy;
• Created openings for civil society input into the efforts of the Secretary General and Permanent Council for action under the IADC.
• And it also set a new and important marker, establishing that adherence to the IADC is the standard for member states' full participation in the inter-American systems. In other words, the IADC is the way into the OAS, and the way out.

Conclusions

President Bush said at this year's OAS General Assembly in Fort Lauderdale: "When the people of the Americas see that opportunity and social mobility are real, they will know that in a free and democratic society, the only limit of how far they can go is the size of their dreams."

Those limits are more important to President Bush to the limits of any supposed left-right spectrum. And that is why President Bush highlighted in Brazil that we have a tough choice to make for the future: "Ensuring social justice for the Americas requires choosing between two competing visions. One offers a vision of hope-it is founded on representative government, integration into the world community, and a faith in the transformative power of freedom in individual lives. The other seeks to roll back the democratic progress of the past two decades by playing to fear, pitting neighbor against neighbor-and blaming others for their own failures to provide for their people. The choices we make will determine which vision will define the Americas our children inherit-and we must make tough decisions today to ensure a better tomorrow."

This means that the real challenge of governance is to respond to the real needs of real people. We must invest to ensure access to quality education, health care, training, and security. Our people, and particularly our children, must be the real beneficiaries of democratic governance.

Thank you very much.