Have you heard anything about Obama sponsored legislation that would take .7% of our gnp and use it to fight world poverty? The account I read says it could come to vote in the Senate very soon. I guess he is not satisfied with the 300 billion or so that we now send abroad. We can't afford him in the Senate, much less in the White House!

I'm always amazed at how much ignorance people absorb when they listen to Limbaugh and a few other windbags of talk radio. Do yourself a favor, don't buy into Rush's show openers with the pop-rock music and soundbites because it sound's "patriotic." He's simply entertainment and a paid commentator hoping his audience will do little to no research on anything he says as his staff screens calls to cut off anybody that he knows has the upper hand on his shenanigans. What we can't afford is another Bush type Republican wannabe in office making the US appear to be the stench of the world, that we already are. Vote Obama! :cool:



Obama, Hagel, Cantwell Introduce Bill to Fight Global Poverty | U.S. Senator Barack Obama

"“Eliminating global poverty remains one of the greatest challenges we face, with billions of people around the world forced to live on just dollars a day,” said Senator Obama. “We can – and must – make it a priority of our foreign policy to commit to eliminating extreme poverty and ensuring every child has food, shelter, and clean drinking water. As we strive to rebuild America's standing in the world, this legislation will not only commit to reducing global poverty, but will also demonstrate our promise and support to those in the developing world. Our commitment to the global economy has to extend beyond trade agreements that are more about increasing corporate profits than about helping workers and small farmers everywhere.”

“Poverty, hunger, and disease will be among the most serious challenges confronting the world in the 21st century,” Senator Hagel said. “This legislation provides the President of the United States the framework and resources to help implement a comprehensive policy to reduce global poverty. It is the human condition that has always driven the great events of history. This is a responsibility of all citizens of the world.”

"America needs to do more to help the 1.1 billion men, women and children throughout the world living on less than $1 a day by helping promote sustainable economic growth and development," said Senator Cantwell. "We need to do more to save lives in the poorest countries. The U.S. needs to implement a real plan to combat poverty on a global scale while also addressing the national security risks extreme poverty creates.""




UN Millennium Project © 2005 | Pressroom


What is the 0.7 commitment, and where did it come from?



"The commitment to provide 0.7% of gross national product (GNP) as official development assistance was first made 35 years ago in a General Assembly resolution, but it has been reaffirmed repeatedly over the years, including at the 2002 global Financing for Development conference in Monterrey, Mexico. However, in 2004, total aid from the industrialized countries totaled just $78.6 billion —or about 0.25% of their collective GNP.



Official Development Assistance in 2004
(source: OECD/DAC 2004)

(*) Indicates countries that have NOT set a timetable for 0.7%.


Country
Aid as % of
GNI Country
Aid as % of
GNI

Australia (*)
0.25
Japan (*)
0.19

Austria
0.24
Luxembourg
0.85

Belgium
0.41
Netherlands
0.74

Canada (*)
0.26
New Zealand (*)
0.23

Denmark
0.84
Norway
0.87

Finland
0.35
Portugal
0.63

France
0.42
Spain
0.26

Germany
0.28
Sweden
0.77

Greece
0.23
Switzerland (*)
0.37

Ireland
0.39
United Kingdom
0.36

Italy
0.15
United States (*)
0.16




Five European countries already devote 0.7% or more of their gross national income to aid. In a historic declaration on 24 May 2005, the European Union announced plans and timetables to reach 0.7 before 2015, which means that 16 of the 22 OECD DAC countries (the EU-15 plus Norway) are on track to meet the commitments they made in Monterrey. The six remaining countries – Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and Switzerland and the United States – have not set out timetables to reach 0.7. If the wealthy nations do now what they have already promised to do, the Millennium Development Goals can be achieved in even the poorest regions."

An $845 Billion earmark... Do you know that this was rushed through Biden's Foreign Relations Committee without so much as a single hearing and no recorded vote(only a voice vote) ?They are rushing it through the Senate so Obama can get a legislative victory on a bill that he is the key sponsor of ;something he has not been able to do to date .By the time this is through the MSM will spin Obama as being the next Bono.

Here are the facts : The U.S makes up only 6% of the world population yet we pay 27% of the worlds peace keeping budget. We pay 22% of the U.N.'s total budget which is, as much as France, Russia, China, Germany, Canada and Italy combined! We donate 60% of the worlds food aid and 40% of the worlds disaster relief aid.In short the U.S. already gives more aid to the world than all other nations on earth combined!

The Millennium Project is a massive marxist transfer of wealth from free countries to countries run by despots and administered by the buffoons at the UN . I for one am not prepared to favor a bill that imposes a global tax on the US or dictates the level of foreign aid we send out and to whom. Jeffrey Sachs, who runs the Millennium Project has written that the only way to raise that kind of money is through a global tax, preferably on carbon-emitting fossil fuels.

Let's not talk GDP ; this bill commits the US to add $65 billion a year to it's foreign aid ;with the UN deciding where it is to be spent .

Also included in the Millennium project are requirements to banning "small arms and light weapons" and ratifying treaties, including the International Criminal Court Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol , and a hand full of other conventions Does Obama plan to introduce separate legislations to compel us to ratify those treaties or is it all inclusive in his bill which mandates compliance with the Millennium goals ?

Yes, but since we don't also exceed every other nation in "per capita" aid we're just a bunch of miserly, self-absorbed cheapskates.

The Heritage Foundation notes "Since the end of World War II, the United States has provided more foreign aid to the world than any other country, yet recipients are just as poor now as they were then. Even worse, foreign aid has fostered corruption and irresponsible policymaking."

Some recipients are even worse off now than before our handouts.

"Zambia, for example, has received $1.3 billion (in constant dollars) in U.S. development assistance for four decades, but its real GDP per capita has fallen from $528 in 1960 to $366 in 2004. Haiti’s lot is even worse. Despite U.S development assistant of more than $3.5 billion (in constant dollars) over the past 40 years, Haiti’s real GDP per capita has dropped by almost half, from $788 to $437."

But hey, what's new about the left fighting to expand failed government programs?

These kind of taxes always confuse me. Why do all these geniuses keep imposing and raising taxes on commodities or activities they're trying to eliminate?

Yeah you would think that if the goal is revenue raising they would encourage carbon emissions.

I'd be willing to bet that if you added private donations then our per capita donation numbers would significantly rise .

also consider trade .The US imports some $660 billion in goods from developing countries annually . Trade means jobs and jobs help reduce poverty. Getting back to private donations ;the Hudson Institute, placed the value of total U.S. private assistance in 2004 at approximately $24.2 billion.

Yep, I've pointed this out before...

Here's the link

Excuses, excuses, and more excuses. Is Ringling Brothers circus missing a couple of clowns? You guys got to be kidding me. We agreed to help out back in 2000. Would you really damn a man for wanting to help out with poverty, despite these earmarks which by the way has many taxation's included?? And another thing that's not about taking our guns away here in the US, it's about a push to reduce rebels in third world countries. This spenditure is minuscule by comparison of the trillions to be spent on Dubya's wars.



National Priorities Project | Bringing the Federal Budget Home

Iraq, Afghanistan could cost $2.4 trillion - Oct. 24, 2007

Yup like I said . We pay a big price for being the cop of the world. Which country would you prefer to take over that job? My biggest objection to the bill is that it gives the spending priorities to the UN . Tell me what program they have administered that wasn't a complete fraud ,scam ,or waste .

Geeze ;libs are all alike . The 2 Dem candidates belly ache about poverty while they both spend a quarter billion dollars on a campaign that will yield no results. Typical liberal spending plan if you ask me.

The libs want to be judged for their intentions, not the results of their 'pie-in-the-sky, by-and-by' schemes. And it is so pathetically funny to hear libs cry about the deficit and national debt, when this is their baby, the New Deal and the Great Society. Barf, barf, barf! In fact, the sorry state of education in America is the result of teachers crawling in bed with politicians; the same happened with medical care years ago, and the results of that fiasco are all around us, and becoming more acute.

I've got news for Republicans we are not the police of the world. We don't do such a good job taking care of our own backyard and certainly not anyone else's. The libs "good intentions" as compared to the "self-anointed" Republican world police force is far less expensive. McCain also speaks on poverty issues, but that wouldn't be belly aching huh? If the DNC doesn't disenfranchise one of the candidate's supporters, the money used during the campaigns will have been well spent to see the Pubs evicted from the White House come November.

Bobby ;you may wish it weren't so but our retreat from the role would create a void to be filled by people of bad intention. Which Navy do you think has the capacity to protect the free flow of goods ?Which nations Navy was able to rapidly deploy to give immediate aid during the 2004 Tsunami ? I am sure we are prepared to respond now when that fool running Myanmar gets his head out of his a** .

Is there a value and cost in those types of activities when we factor in how much aid we give to people in need ?

I mean, look at it: we can't afford cradle to grave security for the folks in the U.S.; how in the world can we afford 'security' for the rest of the world? Oballary has an answer for that? Oh yeah, spend more money, more programs, more security.

Tom and George,

Spending the money on aid for Katrina at home was a duty and responsibility to our own people, and as for as deploying international aid for the Tsunami in 2004 that was a wonderful act of compassion. So to answer your question "yes" it always has depended on the activity. Involving ourselves as if we are going to raise the American flag someday in Iraq and make it the fifty-first state of the US, was an act of ignorance and head first stubbornness. We can't continue to afford throwing money at useless wars that will send us to the grave broke as well. Dubya early on scapegoated the social security system to favor 401k's "investment plans" that can and has also lost money, but that's another subject that we can discuss if someone cares to start another thread.

Iraq expenditures are not the issue here. It is not either /or ;it is to me a matter of sovereignty .I don't mind foreign aid . What I object to is madates dictated to us from a pseudo-international government that I have no say in electing .

Our total military costs are less than 2% of GDP . And they do a lot more good for the world than all our other foreign aid .
I know that the popular counterpoint is for us to take care of our own and retreat to fortress America. Even when that was possible it was a bad and counterproductive idea. It ended up costing us more later . Just as waiting for OBL to whack us was a bad idea that cost us plenty as a result.

Plenty of money was spent for Katrina relief ;and still is being spent... But ,as is typical of big government, it was not administered well .

Giving the money then to a global unaccountable bureaucracy to administer would be an unmitigated disaster ;as the UN performance has proven over and over .It makes even less sense. This Millennium Project is just feel good pablum. I guarantee you'll hear of UN administrators growing rich off it. Just look to the Oil -for Food scam as an example of how the UN typically manages these programs.

BABRAM says: "...aid for Katrina at home was a duty and responsibility to our own people". Wrong; it is compulsory charity, i.e. taxes; pandering; socialism, fascism, whatever you want to call it. W ambushed by the pandering MSM and Dem/fascists. W tried social security reform, but it will take a national disaster like Katrina or 9/11 to get the statists to stop demagoging the issue.

Tom, what a surpise. We disgaree again. You'd think we shouldn't keep to our commitment of aid in helping fight poverty for approximately one-forth the cost of the GDP by comparson of the percentages as opposed to fighting much more expensive uselss war?! No wonder you don't what that to be the subject. OK so let me trun to another dynamic then... what do you mean to imply hat taking care of someone else's business we take care of our backyard? Really?? Any of a dozen idiots could strap on a bomb and walk into WalMart anytime, anywhere. OBL's probably preparing his next video to be stocked on the shelves of BlockBuster soon.

OK folks you heard it from George himself. Katrina was not our responsibility to help our fellow Americans. Thank you George. Perfect!

It is amusing, but tragic, that many volunteers from many groups aid Americans in crisis, Katrina and elsewhere, with little or no recognition; but the tragedy has been terribly demagogued here and elsewhere trying to make political points. And the point that is being made is there is not enough government. Blaming W for Katrina is like blaming Hoover for the Depression. Is that before your time? If so, I'm sorry; but Hoover was the whipping boy for too little government in the national economy, just as Bush is the whipping boy for too little government in a national disaster. I ain't buying a ticket to that play.

Are you suggesting that we shouldn't help our fellow Americans and that our government abandon it's people? Last time I checked the presidents have power to declare natural disasters, is that a problem for you? I'm not blaming Bush for the hurricane itself and I don't think most of the Libs were either. That's a skewed issue of contention for most Republican vs. a few extreme lefties. However many people, like Tom mentioned earlier (and I agree), see a problem in the efficiency of getting that help in a timely manner and the after effect of civil unrest.