Sonny Callahan, a small businessman from Mobile in Alabama, is not a name that means much to the coterie of finance ministers, bankers and bureaucrats converging on Washington for this year's annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank. But the omission of Callahan's name from the "must-see" lists of highly influential people could be a costly mistake.
Callahan, a Republican congressman, has more power over US policy towards the multilaterals and US foreign aid than either president Bill Clinton or secretary of state Madelaine Albright. It may be Clinton and Albright who travel the world, meet government leaders, exchange views about big intellectual ideas and promise billions of dollars in assistance. But it is 67-year-old Callahan, a down-to-earth southerner and a self-confessed "first grader" in the realm of international finance, who signs the cheque.
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Gramm:
unconvinced by
IMF's spotty record |
Callahan is chairman of the US House of Representatives' subcommittee on foreign operations, export financing and related programmes, one of 13 sub-committees making up the all-powerful House appropriations committee. Under "foreign ops", as it is known on Capitol Hill, falls jurisdiction for funding IMF quota increases, the World Bank's soft loan window the International Development Association (IDA), other multilateral funding and foreign aid. Foreign ops holds huge sway not only over how much the US administration can spend overseas, but how and where it can use the resources. Put bluntly, a Clinton promise is not worth the breath it is made with if Callahan's committee cannot be convinced of the project's merits.
The committee's role is becoming ever more crucial with growing scepticism in Congress over the usefulness of the IMF and World Bank. The debate has gone far beyond arguments about how much money the multilaterals should receive. It now centres on whether they should exist at all. With the development of an anti-multilateral caucus on the right of the Republican party - in earlier times considered reliable supporters in foreign aid votes - a major defeat on a funding issue is looking ever more likely.
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Paul:
leave IMF's job
to the marketplace |
The World Bank and the IMF will need to improve their image vastly on Capitol Hill if this is to be avoided. The US Treasury, which has the main administrative responsibility for the multilaterals, is under attack for lacking vision and for failing to sell the multilaterals' case to Congress. Callahan, who is regarded as a conservative moderate and has rallied support for the multilaterals, feels that the administration takes Congress for granted.
"There is a misconception by many in the administrative branch of government that anytime anybody sits in a room and agrees to something, regardless of their position, that that becomes an obligation of the United States. I have argued with the administration it is not an obligation," he says. "An agreement with four people sitting in a room to increase contributions [to the multilaterals] is not an obligation.
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Saxton:
the IMF keeps its doors closed if it can |
"Sort of like the Wye agreement," says Callahan in his southern drawl. He is a man whose unpretentious plain speaking makes no concessions to Washington-style prevarication. "There is a perception now that we have an obligation to Jordan, the PLO and Israel because president Clinton went out to the Wye Plantation and volunteered that he would put up a couple of billion dollars if they would sign a peace agreement. Then they come to me and say this is an obligation of the United States of America.
Aggravation
"Same thing in the international financial community. They sit down and they say 'we'll pledge $10 billion of American taxpayer money' and then they say we're behind in our dues. We're not behind. The Congress has never given the authority for that. Sometimes it's aggravating and I don't think it's limited to the Clinton administration but I think they have been a little bit more guilty than other administrations."
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Callahan:
Camdessus, make my day |
Callahan adds: "I have jokingly told the president and I've told the secretary of state, when she's with the president in a foreign country: 'please limit the amount of toasts he can make', because every time he raises his glass then I become obligated for billions of dollars to give to banks, or to give to other countries. If we could just limit the president's ability to make toasts it would make my job in the Congress easier. These toasts, somehow or other, become, in the eyes of the administration, an obligation. Then, they call me a deadbeat because I'm not paying my bills. I didn't authorize the bills. The president just promised it."
Callahan delivered through the House in August, foreign operations bill HR2606 for the financial year 2000 by 385 votes to 35, one of the highest majorities ever recorded for a foreign aid bill. The background against which the bill had to pass was a tough one, with Congress perturbed about a proposed $40 million World Bank loan to China to relocate 58,000 poor Chinese farmers to Qinghai province, an area Tibetans claim as part of their original territory.
The bill, which needed to pass further stages in America's complicated legislative process in September before becoming law, cut the World Bank's IDA funding by $232 million, to almost 30% less than the previous year. Callahan insists this was done for purely budgetary reasons. However, this latest multilateral blunder in China cannot have made any easier his job to persuade a recalcitrant House to fall into line.
The result vindicates the Republicans' decision to pluck Callahan from obscurity and make him chairman of the least attractive appropriations sub-committee. Foreign ops is a real turn-off to an ambitious American politician because of the low priority given to world affairs by the voters. As former House speaker Tip O'Neill famously said: "All politics is local."
When the Republicans gained control of the House in 1995 after 40 years of Democrat dominance, the party leadership wanted as chairman of foreign ops someone reliable who wouldn't use it as a soap box for independent ideas and who could deliver the backbench vote. Callahan who has represented Alabama's first congressional district since 1985 - an area whose conservative traditions are immortalized in such works as Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird and Alfred Uhry's Driving Miss Daisy - perfectly fitted the order. Callahan had rarely voted in favour of a foreign aid measure during his time in Congress and was an instinctive sceptic. But he was prepared to listen to professional arguments in favour of continued US support.