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President Bush promoted these policies during the international conference on development finance in Monterrey, Mexico, during the week of March 18th, and subsequent visits to Peru and El Salvador, where Bush met with various Latin American heads of state. With few concrete initiatives to offer Latin Americans, the brief visit was intended to shore up support for free trade initiatives (FTAA, CAFTA, Andean Trade Preference Act), security programs (Expansion of Plan Colombia, Plan Sur in Mexico). Plan Sur has dramatically increased military presence in southern Mexico, especially in the narrowest part of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, to curtail Central American immigration to the U.S.. Coincidentally, the isthmus is the heart of Plan Puebla Panama, a development plan that would potentially displace hundreds of indigenous communities for the construction of transportation corridors and maquila factories. In return, regional presidents hope to win amnesty for undocumented workers and a plan that will allow for orderly immigration of workers, but Mexican President Fox would settle for a modest guest worker program.

President Bush announced that the United States would contribute $5 billion over the next three budget years to a Millennium Challenge Account to help developing nations improve their economies and standards of living. He said the new funds–which are over and above the current U.S. foreign assistance budget–would be directed toward countries that demonstrate a strong commitment to good governance, the health and education of their people, and economic policies that foster enterprise and entrepreneurship.

In an unusual correction to the President’s remarks, the White House later clarified that the U.S. is in fact offering an amount that is double what the President initially referred to in his speech. The US Treasury confirmed that last week'snews of a $5bn fund over three years from 2004 had been increased to a three-year total of nearly $10bn, followed by a permanent increase of $5bn a year thereafter. Paul O'Neill, the US Treasury secretary, promised on Wednesday to consult international partners on the way the US would spend its new aid budget, which he confirmed was twice as big as previously announced.

"Greater contributions from developed nations must be linked to greater responsibility from developing nations," Bush said. To that end, his administration is advocating the use of concrete indicators of the effectiveness of assistance programs, so that aid can be directed to countries that show positive results.

President Bush also proposed changes in multilateral development aid. "I challenge the development banks to provide up to half of the funds devoted to poor nations in the form of grants, rather than loans," he said. "All the development banks should adopt a growth agenda, increasing their support for private sector enterprises and focusing more on education, as the Inter-American Development Bank has done," he added.

NGOs meeting in Monterrey as well as other delegates welcomed the U.S. pledge as a first step toward meeting the estimated $50 billion per year in grants to poor countries estimated as necessary to meet the Millennium Goals.

The United States is one of the founding member countries of the IDB, and it holds 30 percent of the institution’s shares. The U.S. is also a member of the Inter-American Investment Corporation–an IDB affiliate that invests small and medium-sized private companies, and of the Multilateral Investment Fund, which was created as part of the Enterprise of the Americas initiative under the administration of President George Herbert Walker Bush in 1990.

http://www.interaction.org/development/idb/enewsmar2002.html

The Millennium Challenge Account taxpayer money giveaway.

President Bush called for “a new compact for global development, defined by new accountability for both rich and poor nations alike. Greater contributions from developed nations must be linked to greater responsibility from developing nations.” The President pledged that the United States would lead by example and increase its core development assistance by 50 percent over the next three years, resulting in an annual increase of $5 billion by FY 2006.