Norton on Urgent Mission to Haiti Friday (5/15/08)

Washington, D.C. - Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) will travel to Haiti with a Congressional Delegation on Friday, May 16, 2008, as a 40% increase in global food prices has sparked food riots, at least six deaths, and the replacement of the prime minister. The delegation will leave the Rayburn House Office Building at 6:30 a.m. and return to Andrews at 9:30 p.m. on Friday May 16, 2008. "Food and fuel prices are major ingredients in recession conditions that are fast emerging in the U.S. economy," Norton said. "I see the effect on my own constituents. I can imagine the human suffering in Haiti, but members of Congress need to travel there to see for ourselves, so that we can come home with the practical solutions, before the crisis worsens."

Norton said that the District and other jurisdictions are facing food shortages in donations of food to programs that feed the hungry and the homeless here, but conditions in Haiti threaten a country that has struggled to maintain its fragile stability. Hope II, a bill to help Haiti qualify for duty-free treatment on exports, is part of the Farm Bill that is going to the President today. However, just as the Farm Bill uses U.S. farm products to provide food assistance, Hope II has incentives for use of American inputs in Haitian apparel to be exported here. Cheap U.S. rice has had the unintended effect of discouraging corn and other crops that were once staples for home-grown food in Haiti. Norton said that besides clear humanitarian concerns, economic instability in Haiti is not in our security or national interest. In the past, troubles in Haiti have produced large numbers of immigrants seeking help here but were unable to enter the country. "The nations of the world must come to Haiti's assistance, but Haiti has always been in our country's sphere of interest." Norton said, "The win-win we thought we had in the nutrition and other products abroad desperately need retooling. Haiti is a good place to begin the urgently needed process of thinking through unprecedented and complicated problems created by the global economy."