Former Rep. Jack Kemp to discuss Middle East solutions

Former
Rep. Jack Kemp to discuss Middle East solutions

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News staff

Former U.S. Rep. Jack Kemp will present “A 21st-Century
Marshall Plan for the Middle East” at the James A.
Baker III Institute for Public Policy at 5:30 p.m. Friday,
Jan. 30. The lecture is open to the Rice community.

Kemp is founder
of Empower America, an organization dedicated to “ensuring
that government actions foster growth, economic well-being,
freedom and individual responsibility.”

Empower America’s
21st-Century Committee is trying to adapt George Marshall’s
1947 plan for European recovery — an effort by the
United States to reduce the hunger, homelessness, sickness,
unemployment and political restlessness of 270 million people
in 16 nations in West Europe. The Marshall Plan, for which
Marshall received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953, required
the recipients to organize to produce a rational, multilateral
approach to their common economic difficulties. The program
cost American taxpayers $11.8 billion over four years and
was aimed at strengthening the economic superstructure,
particularly industry.

For Central Asia
and the Middle East, Kemp wants to create a 21st-century
Marshall Plan based largely on the ideas of Hernando de
Soto, a Peruvian economist, Empower America associate and
leader of Instituto Libertad y Democracia. De Soto is the
author of “The Mystery of Capital” and “The
Other Path,” books that Kemp described as “seminal
works for understanding and solving world poverty and terrorism
in the 21st century.”

Prior to founding
Empower America, Kemp served as secretary of housing and
urban development. He was named as the Republican Party’s
vice presidential candidate in 1996, and for 18 years Kemp
represented the Buffalo area and western New York in Congress.