WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks in the U.S. Capitol today at the Gold Medal Ceremony honoring Dr. Muhammad Yunus:

“Speaker Boehner, Leader Reid, Leader Pelosi, Senator Durbin, distinguished guests and friends. 

“Over the years, countless men and women have worked hard to reduce the scourge of poverty in the world — because they understand that poverty breeds fear, anxiety, and hopelessness; that it crushes dreams, tramples ambition, and holds societies back. But while we’ve long agreed on the desirability of the goal, its attainment has remained elusive.

“Over time, we’ve made enormous advances. Starting in the West, the rise of free markets and free people helped build a ladder to a better life for many millions of men and women who had only known hardship before. More recently, that freedom has spread throughout the developing world, knocking down government barriers to progress and advancing miracles of prosperity in its wake — miracles we could hardly have imagined just a few decades ago.

“Yet despite these gains — despite the fact that many have been freed from despair, and entire diseases have been wiped off the planet — the struggle against global poverty continues.

“Some look at the enormity of the problem and throw up their hands. Others cling to the outdated notion that government alone can solve it. But as the man we honor today has long argued, we owe the world’s poor better than a false choice between complacency and bureaucracy. This was the great insight of Dr. Yunus. He dared to dream bigger.

“Muhammad Yunus saw crushing poverty first-hand in his native Bangladesh and resolved to do something about it. Not ignore it, not subcontract his conscience out to the state, but to actually do something about it. Dr. Yunus has said that when we want to help the poor, we usually offer them charity. But charity, he has said, can be an excuse to avoid recognizing root problems, to shrug off responsibility – and, in turn, to perpetuate poverty by taking initiative away from the poor.

“So he came up with the brilliant — and now common — idea of providing small amounts of credit to the poor in order to provide them with means to rise out of poverty. His idea was at first met with skepticism and even derision. Yet this man, an academic rather than a banker, moved forward anyway. And today, millions are the better for it.

“When Dr. Yunus received the Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking work in 2006, 7 million borrowers had taken advantage of his innovative credit idea. Most of the loans they received were small — about $100 — but that credit allowed them to start businesses and mount a full frontal assault on hopelessness. Beggars became travelling salesmen. Mothers sold nutrient-packed yogurt to neighbors and provided phone and telecommunications services to villages that rarely saw either.

“More than just helping themselves, these budding entrepreneurs helped transform their communities by fighting malnourishment and spreading technologies that helped open their towns and villages to the wider world — and helped bring the wider world to them.

“With an approximate total loan volume of $25 billion, the microfinance sector that Dr. Yunus inspired serves an estimated 100 million people across the world.

“One of them is a Haitian woman named Odette. Odette once lived alone and couldn’t afford to feed her three children. But after taking out small loans from one of Dr. Yunus’ partner banks in Haiti, she developed a thriving second-hand mattress business. This allowed her not only to feed her children, not only to move them out of a leaky house, but to acquire properties on her own and rent them out, gaining more hope and confidence than any government program could ever provide.

“‘I used to go around begging,’ she said. ‘Now people can’t understand how I do it.’

“This is the power of microfinance. This is the power of Mohammed Yunus’ audacious idea.

“We may not eliminate poverty tomorrow, or next week, or over the next decade.

“But if we’re dedicated to the task, if we have the courage to move beyond old ways of thinking, we can come closer than many before us could have dreamed.

“Mohammed Yunus is proving that. And so are the millions he’s inspired and empowered around the world.

“Dr. Yunus, congratulations on this well-deserved recognition.”