Be Careful What You Wish For

Due to gerrymandered Congressional districts in California, the county in which I live in has three representatives in Congress: Reps. George Miller, Jerry McNerney, and John Garamendi. All are Democrats and supportive of foreign development programs. The Contra Costa County RESULTS group which I lead has relationships with all three and we are lucky in that we usually only have to let them know about legislation for them to support it.

But while I’m socially liberal, I’ve got a fairly hard core of fiscal conservatism running through me. I know some folks think the idea of a social liberal/fiscal conservative is an oxymoron. I hereby acknowledge their right to be ignorant and hope that someday they’ll become more informed.

Being a fiscal conservative, I support Republican ideals of self-reliance and fiscal prudence. My wife and I are careful to live within our means; we’ve put aside a portion of our income all our lives and have used that savings when one of us is out of work. (Shameless plug here: if you’re looking for a good writer, please let me know. I’m currently unemployed and looking for work.)

One of the reasons I support RESULTS so much is that it champions a development “tool” called microfinance. Microfinance is the name given to a host of financial services like savings, insurance, and lending made available to impoverished people lacking access to mainstream financial services. Until fairly recently, the poorest of the poor, those trying to survive on incomes of less than $1.25 a day, could not take out loans to start a business, buy health or housing insurance, or open a saving account. No for-profit commercial bank or savings and loan could stay in business with the tiny profit margins that would occur servicing the needs of people who make less than $460 a year.

An American-trained, Bangladeshi economist, Dr. Muhammad Yunus, however, started Grameen Bank and while working with destitute people, especially women, developed the strategies used in microfinance that enable those at the bottom of the economic ladder to begin lifting themselves out of poverty. They do so by launching and running their own tiny businesses. The upcoming movie, Bonsai People, by Holly Mosher gives some great insight to how Grameen works.

If you can accept the idea that even hard-working, entrepreneurial people can be trapped in poverty by their environment, then you can accept the idea that by changing that environment, you can enable those same people to lift themselves out of poverty. Microfinance essentially uses the power of capitalism to enable those financially impoverished folk to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.

As a fiscal conservative, that idea powerfully resonates with me. What I don’t understand, though, is why only a handful of Republicans champion microfinance? My hope is that it’s only ignorance of the concept and successes of microfinance.

Given all that background, perhaps you’ll understand why I decided to “adopt” a conservative Republican, Representative Tom McClintock, who represents a district about 90 miles east of the one I live in. I wanted to see if I could use my understanding and belief in traditionally conservative ideals to forge a relationship with a modern conservative in Congress.

That’s why I’ve taken it upon myself to introduce Kristen Glenn and her boss, Rep. Tom McClintock, to the power of microfinance and urge him to join Congressional supporters of those programs.

My first real request for him is to sign onto a letter supporting microfinance being sent to the head of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The reply I got back via Kristen was that Rep. McClintock, “… does not think the federal government should be operating microfinance programs at home or abroad.  Especially during this time of soaring deficits he is not supporting the expansion of any government programs and thinks we need to be cutting a lot more than we are.”

So, I find myself thankful for Kristen and Rep. McClintock’s honesty and backbone in holding true to their conservative beliefs. I’m now trying to better understand their position and see if there’s common ground we can agree on.