The first issue of Economic Justice News carried a cover story on 50 Years is Enough's efforts to block President Clinton's request that Congress authorize $18 billion for the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Over three months have passed, and the matter has still not been decided; our efforts continue.

Make no mistake: this is good news. Considering what a high priority Clinton has assigned the IMF funding C he has dropped plans to push again for fast-track negotiating authority for trade agreements (a fight he first lost in November) and has sent Secretaries Rubin (Treasury), Albright (State), and Cohen (Defense) and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to testify before and lobby members of Congress repeatedly C no one could accuse IMF opponents of having it easy. Fortunately, the Administration's calculation that the financial crises in East Asia would scare members of Congress into approving any amount they asked for has proved wrong. Apart from Administration allies eager to spout the party line, legislators have not bought Secretary Rubin's attempted panic-mongering.

It is actually possible that the Administration's great desire to get the funding authorized has so far helped forge an effective alliance to block that goal. Those of us attacking the IMF from the left find ourselves in an odd partnership with Representative Dick Armey and Senator Jesse Helms, working against old allies like Representatives Barney Frank and David Bonior. Many of the Republicans opposing the funding may be doing so largely to oppose President Clinton. Others are making calculations in the obscure politics leading up to the choice of a successor to Newt Gingrich as House Speaker.

50 Years is Enough opposes funding for the IMF unless substantial reforms are made in the institution. We demand a departure from the rigid structural adjustment programs (SAPs) that have been imposed on over 80 countries around the world during the last 20 years. Rather than creating conditions for overcoming poverty, SAPs have institutionalized desperation and the denial of fundamental needs like education, health care, and food security. SAPs have also harmed women disproportionately and led to the debasement of labor and environmental standards worldwide. We demand that the IMF engage more seriously in concerted efforts to end the burden of unpayable debt for the poorest countries of the world. Finally, in conjunction with forces from both the left and the right, we call for the IMF to become more transparent and accountable in its operations.

One might wonder why ostensible progressives like Barney Frank are not opposing the IMF if the institution is as culpable for misery around the world as we claim. We do not have very convincing speculations as to why Frank, Bonior, and so many other self-declared progressives in the Democratic Party have taken the position they have. Frank orchestrated a compromise among members of the House Banking Committee to join the forces of would-be reform like himself with Committee Chairman Jim Leach, a moderate Republican and champion of the IMF.

The result was a bill that would give the $18 billion to the IMF but also request a number of positive reforms: the U.S. Executive Director to the Fund would push for greater attention to improving labor and environmental policies, greater institutional openness, and the Treasury Department would have to work with panels of NGOs and labor representatives to discuss IMF policy. The central problem is that the bill would deliver the money before any reforms take place.

As hearings of a Banking Committee Subcommittee on April 21 would reveal, similar demands have been made many times by Congress, but have been unenforceable. In fact, it was Frank himself who first recognized this; in 1994 he led the first and only effective Congressional effort to effect reform at the IMF by actually holding money back until reforms were in place.

When introducing the compromise to the Committee, Frank said he supported the bill  "with no great enthusiasm," but felt that it was the best that could be achieved given the realities of multilateral politics and the IMF's institutional personality. His own past legislative efforts make his strategy and statements especially puzzling. The compromise bill   (the one giving the $18 billion and asking politely for reforms) passed the committee by a vote of 40 to 9. No Democrats voted against it; the nine "no" votes came from eight Republicans and the House's one Independent, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who has been our closest ally in this struggle.

Fortunately, the Banking Committee was not the end of the line. Even though the full Senate approved the $18 billion -- with a different set of non-binding conditions -- the full House has yet to take action. And it does not look like the members of the House are going to simply take the advice of the Banking Committee; indeed, they have already declined to attach the bill to the emergency spending bill C primarily for disaster relief in areas hit by El Niño storms C which the Administration hoped would be the vehicle for the IMF money.

After a three-week Spring Recess, Congress reconvened on April 21. One of the first orders of business was a hearing by the House Banking Committee Subcommittee on General Oversight and Investigations, chaired by IMF opponent Spencer Bachus (R-Alabama), with Sanders as the ranking opposition member. The hearing featured the first appearance by the U.S. Executive Director (US E.D.) to the IMF, Karin Lissakers, at a Congressional hearing. The idea was to ask some questions about why the many attempts by Congress to demand reform at the IMF (insisting that the E.D. use her "voice and vote") seemed to have little impact. She appeared with Treasury Dept. official Tim Geithner.

Lissakers did not do well, which is particularly puzzling in light of the fact that she was told most of the questions in advance, and had been asked them at earlier, less formal, sessions. Geithner seemed much more sure of himself. Much of the questioning centered on the fact that though she estimates the Board has made about 2000 decisions since 1993, when she was appointed U.S. E.D., and there have been only about a dozen formal votes. This is because they prefer to operate by consensus. It also means that Lissakers doesn't have to follow Congress's requirements because votes are so seldom taken.

Sanders was particularly good in hammering away at the illegality of U.S. agreement to the IMF-led bailout of Indonesia, a major human rights violator according to State Department reports, and an authoritarian government and abuser of labor rights by any measure. (Sanders co-sponsored a bill in 1994 to prohibit any U.S. support in international financial institutions of countries violating basic labor rights.) Both he and Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) made clear statements that they believed the E.D. was not obeying the laws passed by Congress.

The hearing room was packed during the time Lissakers and Geithner were testifying, and there were about 25 members of the press present. The crowd diminished substantially after Lissakers left. Thus the news stories the next day, including a substantial piece in the New York Times, reported only on this portion of the hearing (and it was the most newsworthy). The Times article focused on the possibility that U.S. law had been violated in the Indonesia bailout, and gave good coverage of Sanders's charges that Lissakers was not complying with Congressional directives.

The subsequent panels included Ralph Nader, former U.S. E.D. to the IMF Thomas Dawson (the token IMF booster), right-wingers Edwin Feulner (president of the Heritage Foundation, who said very little we would argue with!), Lawrence Lindsey (American Enterprise Institute), and Ian Vasquez (Cato Institute), and, again from our side, Walden Bello (Focus on the Global South in Bangkok) and John Cavanagh (Institute for Policy Studies). Lots of good things were said, with perhaps the most notable being Nader's repeated calls for IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus to come to Congress and testify in open hearings. The biggest surprise of the later panels may have been one of Rep. Bachus's lines of questioning: this Republican asked about how IMF policies encourage the destruction of the rainforests of southeast Asia, and have done so in the past in South America and Africa. The environmental angle seems to be catching on in some unlikely places.

The media coverage of this hearing buoyed the anti-IMF forces. Few were prepared, however, for the opportunity that presented itself two days later (April 23), when, late in the day, Rep. David Obey (D-Wisconsin and ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee) proposed that the full House instruct its representatives to the House-Senate Conference Committee go along with the Senate's attachment of the $18 billion to the disaster relief spending bill being reconciled by the two houses of Congress. Gingrich responded by blasting the IMF as "consistently wrong" and said "We believe, on behalf of the taxpayers, that we have the right, as the Congress, to ask some very tough questions of a multibillion-dollar bureaucratic institution that is totally secret." The vote was 222-186 to reject Obey's suggestion.

This was the most significant victory so far in the drive to deny the IMF its expanded capital base. As of this writing, it is uncertain what the next step will be for the Administration and its supporters. We expect a new bill requesting the $18 billion some time this summer, but do not have reliable predictions on when that could be. President Clinton has been turning up the rhetorical heat, such as when he used the occasion of the dedication of the monstrous new Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington to push the IMF money. He even dug up an old Reagan quote, saying "an investment in the IMF is simply an investment in American prosperity." IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus also seems a little worried. Asked to comment while speaking in Australia, he said, "Let's imagine that the U.S. Congress does not approve a capital increase. We are then for the first time in 53 years of the history of the IMF in a major crisis situation."

Some Republicans, including House Appropriations Chair Bob Livingston, have been insisting that they will insert language into any IMF bill requiring the Administration to agree not to fund organizations advocating changes in abortion restrictions in other countries. Clinton has promised to veto any bill with such provisions, and indeed did so last year when that language was attached to a $3.5 billion authorization for the IMF.

Meanwhile, 50 Years is Enough folks and their allies in Washington have been contacting the 28 Democrats who voted with us on April 23 C a rather surprising list C to shore up that support and start getting them to reach out to their colleagues and encourage them not to swallow the trickle-down philosophy of global economics. Towards that end we are getting various members to circulate "dear colleague letters" detailing the effects of IMF SAPs on women and in Africa and Latin America.

A new issue has also appeared on the radar screen of those concerned about the expanding power of the IMF: capital account liberalization. This obscure term translates in practice to the IMF's goal of requiring every country to eliminate regulations on the movement of investment capital within and across borders. One example is Chile's required minimum stays for foreign investments; a measure taken to forestall the sort of panic that caused the Mexican peso crisis of 1994. The IMF now wants to amend its Articles of Agreement to ban such regulations; any country wishing to institute them would have to consult with and gain permission from the Fund. Given that rapid outflows of short-term foreign investment have been a leading factor in the Asian crises and the Mexican crisis, the timing and bland insistence on the wisdom of this move by Rubin and the IMF is curious. A bi-partisan amendment has been formulated by Representatives Ron Klink (D-Pennsylvania) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida) to condition any Congressional approval of IMF funds on Secretary Rubin opposing this change to the IMF's Charter (which opposition, given the lopsided balance of power in the IMF, would be an effective veto of the whole idea).

  On May 1, we saw signs that this issue was getting the attention of Democrats who have until now been supporting the $18 billion. Six of them C Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, Minority Whip David Bonior, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, Esteban Torres, and Nancy Pelosi C wrote to Secretary Rubin saying that their support for the IMF money was put in danger by the Treasury Department's support for the capital account liberalization amendment to the IMF Articles of Agreement. Frank also said that the IMF's likely resumption of payments to Indonesia troubled him. On May 5, Gephardt, all too characteristically, stepped back from his own words. He said that he didn't mean to imply that he would vote against the IMF money, just that he was concerned. As far as we know the other five are holding firm.

As the political situation in Indonesia continues to change (at this writing, Suharto has just announced his resignation), the connections between the IMF's strictures and the desperation of the Indonesian people are getting more attention. Stories are also beginning to appear in the press about how the true impact of the financial crises and IMF intervention are becoming apparent in South Korea and Thailand as well. The Washington Post had a front-page article on May 4 detailing the full impact on middle-class South Koreans. More labor unrest is anticipated there. Thailand is already asking for new assistance packages, and Thai businesses are reportedly not able to get sufficient credit.

Finally, we should mention that 50 Years is Enough got a boost when on Sunday, April 26th the Washington Post published an "op-ed" article I wrote in opposition to the IMF. It was reprinted in the Post's Japanese edition, and, a few days later, in the International Herald-Tribune. We have been getting many requests for more information as a result.