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February 14, 2008

Obama gets down to specifics, and it's not pretty

Thomas Lifson
Is the American electorate solidly behind the idea of increasing foreign aid $845 billion over the next 13 years? Apparently that is what Barack Obama believes, for a bill he sponsored  doing exactly that probably is coming to a vote today in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, according to Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media.

A nice-sounding bill called the "Global Poverty Act," sponsored by Democratic presidential candidate and Senator Barack Obama, is up for a Senate vote on Thursday and could result in the imposition of a global tax on the United States. The bill, which has the support of many liberal religious groups, makes levels of U.S. foreign aid spending subservient to the dictates of the United Nations.   [....]

The bill, which is item number four on the committee's business meeting agenda, passed the House by a voice vote last year because most members didn't realize what was in it. Congressional sponsors have been careful not to calculate the amount of foreign aid spending that it would require. According to the website of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, no hearings have been held on the Obama bill in that body.   

A release from the Obama Senate office about the bill declares, "In 2000, the U.S. joined more than 180 countries at the United Nations Millennium Summit and vowed to reduce global poverty by 2015. We are halfway towards this deadline, and it is time the United States makes it a priority of our foreign policy to meet this goal and help those who are struggling day to day."  

The legislation itself requires the President "to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to further the United States foreign policy objective of promoting the reduction of global poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty, and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people worldwide, between 1990 and 2015, who live on less than $1 per day." 

The bill defines the term "Millennium Development Goals" as the goals set out in the United Nations Millennium Declaration, General Assembly Resolution 55/2 (2000).  

Because his campaign has stayed with vapid generalities about hope and change, the specifics of this bill are doubly important as an indicator of the direction of Obama's intentions. So a president Obama would follow UN recommendations about shipping more of our tax dollars overseas, apparnelty. Is this really a winning issue?

Hat tip: Richard Baehr

Update -- Rick Moran adds:

I'm not sure that a "global tax" is mandated here. It would seem to be one mechanism to meet the .7 GDP requirement in foreign aid spending but is not required.
The bill is an abomination nonetheless. International cooperation is one thing. But this smacks of making US policy subservient to a supra national agenda loaded up with un-American concepts like gun control and government intervention in parent-child relationships.

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