Barack Obama Global Poverty Act Meets Conservative Resistance

How is this measure proposed by Barack Obama any different than President George Bush giving billions of taxpayers hard earned monies for combatting AIDS in Africa?

We're tracking... for truth... see below...

It appears the Global Poverty Act bill doesn't commit the US to a global tax which would force participation by individuals in the United States by way of coerced taxation.

However, apparently, the United States signed onto the UN's 8 Millennium Goals

Goals for a New Millennium

In September 2000, more world leaders met at UN Headquarters in New York City for the “Millennium Summit” than for any other event in history. There, they adopted the Millennium Declaration, which put into words their hopes for a more prosperous world. But the declaration was not just any UN resolution. It set specific goals, gave deadlines for many of them and was accepted by every country at the summit.

The eight goals are today known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Most of them are set to be achieved by 2015 and each one focuses on a different global concern.

The MDGs

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
Goal 4: Reduce child deaths
Goal 5: Improve mothers’ health
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development

http://www.unausa.org/site/pp.asp?c=fvKRI8MPJpF&b=551463

Barack Obama has answered questions from the UN which show his positions in key areas.

The US already committed to support of UN Millennium Development Goals.

The Global Poverty Act appears to lend support for the UN Goal to end poverty by 1015, but as proposed doesn't commit the US to taxation for that specific purpose...

We'll be watching to determine how Obama will propose carrying out his answer concerning global climate change, however.

(Net the Truth Online)

United Nations Association of the USA (UNA-USA)
Better World Campaign (BWC)
2008 Presidential Candidate Questionnaire on US-UN Relations

Response from Barack Obama

8. Poverty

One third of the world’s population – more than 2 billion people – live in abject poverty. Hunger, disease, and illiteracy present both moral and security issues. The scale and scope of global poverty demands broad international cooperation. At the urging of the UN and the international donor community, world leaders agreed in 2000 to a specific, prioritized development agenda for international focus and commitment. The Millennium Development Goals (or MDGs) include eight concrete objectives for achievement by 2015: cutting extreme poverty in half; achieving universal primary education; empowering women; reducing child and maternal mortality; reversing the spread of AIDS and other deadly diseases; protecting the environment; and cooperating internationally on these aims. The MDGs have been endorsed by Presidents Clinton and George Bush.

Do you support the MDGs, the United Nations’ agreed international framework for alleviating global poverty? As President, what specific steps would you take to achieve these goals?

I fully support the Millennium Development Goals. In the 21st century, progress must not just mean freedom – it must mean freedom from fear and freedom from want. The lesson of my own experience – as an American boy living in Indonesia, as a community organizer in neighborhoods left behind by global change, and as a state senator and United States senator – is that change must come from the bottom up. In 2000, the Member states of the United Nations unanimously agreed to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These eight goals offer a people-centered vision of development, including a commitment to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015. As President, I will make the MDGs America’s goals.

http://www.unausa.org/site/pp.asp?c=fvKRI8MPJpF&b=3879851

Global Poverty Act of 2007
House: Global Poverty Act H.R. 1302
Senate: Global Poverty Act S.2433

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s110-2433

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-h1302/show

http://www.borgenproject.org/globalpovertyact.html

http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:S.2433:

Anti-poverty bill stirs blog-world controversy
by SHNS on Thu, 02/21/2008 - 14:17. By LES BLUMENTHAL, McClatchy Newspapers

http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/30908

Legislature 2008
Rep. Smith: Poverty act critics' real target is Obama
By Les Blumenthal
McClatchy Newspapers

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2004193014_poverty21.html

Thu, Feb 21, 2008 8:33pm ET
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Quoting Kincaid, Limbaugh falsely asserted Obama bill "would commit the United States to spending 0.7 percent of GDP on foreign aid"
Summary: Reading from a column by Accuracy in Media editor and writer Cliff Kincaid, Rush Limbaugh falsely asserted on his nationally syndicated radio show that the Global Poverty Act, sponsored by Sen. Barack Obama, "would commit the United States to spending 0.7 percent of GDP on foreign aid."

On the February 14 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh read a portion of a February 12 column by Cliff Kincaid, editor and writer at the right-wing "watchdog of the news media" organization Accuracy in Media, in which Kincaid falsely asserted that the Global Poverty Act, sponsored by Sen. Barack Obama, "would commit the U.S. to spending 0.7 percent of gross national product on foreign aid, which amounts to a phenomenal 13-year total of $845 billion over and above what the U.S. already spends." Limbaugh also read Kincaid's false statement that the bill "could result in the imposition of a global tax on the United States." In fact, the bill does not impose a tax on the United States or allow any other body to impose a tax. In his column, Kincaid further falsely asserted that the legislation "makes levels of U.S. foreign aid spending subservient to the dictates of the United Nations."

In fact, while the Global Poverty Act would proclaim that "[i]t is the policy of the United States to promote 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 act would establish no specific funding source, would not commit the United States to any targeted level of spending, and specifically would require the president -- not the United Nations -- 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."

... In fact, the Global Poverty Act, while noting several Millennium Project goals and declaring that the goal of reducing global poverty by 2015 "is the policy of the United States," does not address the recommendation of spending 0.7 percent of GNP on foreign aid to achieve the Millennium Project goals. According to the Millennium Project website, the 0.7 percent of GNP recommendation "was first made 35 years ago in a General Assembly resolution." The Global Poverty Act directs the president, acting through the secretary of state, to develop a strategy to meet the goal of reducing poverty. It also states that strategy "should include" among its components "[i]mproving the effectiveness of development assistance and making available additional overall United States assistance levels as appropriate," but it does not require that foreign aid be increased or mandate a funding level for foreign assistance. The Global Poverty Act of 2007 was sponsored in the House of Representatives by Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA).

Additionally, while Kincaid wrote that "Jeffrey Sachs, who runs the U.N.'s 'Millennium Project,' says that the U.N. plan to force the U.S. to pay 0.7 percent of GNP in increased foreign aid spending would add $65 billion a year to what the U.S. already spends" and added that "the only way to raise that kind of money, Sachs has written, is through a global tax, preferably on carbon-emitting fossil fuels," the bill does not impose a tax, nor does it give the U.N. the power to "force the U.S. to pay 0.7 of GNP in increased foreign aid" or to impose a tax...

http://mediamatters.org/items/200802210011

U.S. Africa Policy: An Unparalleled Partnership Strengthening Democracy, Overcoming Poverty, and Saving Lives
President And Mrs. Bush's Africa Trip Underscores The New Approach To Africa Policy Under This Administration, And Builds On A Dramatic Increase In The United States' Commitment To African Development

On February 14, 2008, President Bush discussed his upcoming trip to Africa and the Administration's strong commitment to growth and development on the African continent.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/africa/

George W. Bush has "quadrupled aid to the poorest people on the planet"

http://current.com/items/88854714_george_w_bush_has_quadrupled_aid_to_the_poorest_people_on_the_planet

Bush Plans Africa Trip to Tout HIV/AIDS Program
by Michele Kelemen

...This is clearly a trip about building a different sort of legacy for Bush. Before he spoke Thursday at the Smithsonian's Museum of African Art, his aides played a newly produced video touting PEPFAR — a $15 billion program to fight HIV/AIDS.

The Africa trip is meant to highlight the administration's work on AIDS and Malaria. Bush's former speech writer Michael Gerson says the Bush years should be known for its soft power approach in Africa.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19053773

Conservatives Place Hold on Obama's Global Poverty Bill
By Pete Winn
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
February 25, 2008

(CNSNews.com) - Two conservative members of the U.S. Senate have anonymously placed a hold on Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) global poverty bill, Cybercast News Service has learned.

The effort is an attempt to slow down the progress of a bill (S. 2433) that conservative analysts say could eventually force the U.S. to increase its foreign aid by hundreds of billions of dollars.

Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media, a conservative media watchdog, said S. 2433 has been getting "a pass" from Congress. It received absolutely no scrutiny in the House last fall, when it was passed on a voice vote, and no scrutiny last week in the Senate, when the Foreign Relations Committee also passed it on a voice vote...

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=/Politics/archive/200802/POL20080225a.html

Barack Obama and the Global Poverty Act
By Vincent Gioia
Mar 13, 2008

Overlooked in the fervor to select a Democrat nominee is what Barack Obama really stands for; we can only hope this will not be the case in the national election if Obama is chosen. There are many ideas proposed by Obama to criticize him about but one that stands out and has great implications is the Global Poverty Act Obama supports.

The Global Poverty Act (S.2433) would require the United States to spend $845 billion ($845,000,000,000.00) on welfare to third-world countries. This amounts to a tax of over $2,000 on each man, woman and child in the United States. The foreign aid budget now stands at $300 billion; the Act would add the additional expenditure to the already huge amount allocated to assist the world.

As Phyllis Schlafly wrote recently:

"Obama's costly, dangerous and altogether bad bill (S. 2433), which could come up in the Senate any day, is called the Global Poverty Act. It would commit U.S. taxpayers to spend 0.7 percent of our Gross Domestic Product on foreign handouts..."

WorldNetDaily.com quotes Cliff Kincaid at Accuracy in Media as saying: "[T]he legislation, if approved, dedicates 0.7 percent of the U.S. gross national product to foreign aid, which over 13 years... would amount to $845 billion 'over and above what the U.S. already spends. "The plan passed the House in 2007 '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." (Emphasis added to show the seriousness of the chance this horrendous bill may become law.)


http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/publish/article_272619433.shtml

Overlooked in the fervor to select a Democrat nominee is what Barack Obama really stands for; we can only hope this will not be the case in the national election if Obama is chosen. There are many ideas proposed by Obama to criticize him about but one that stands out and has great implications is the Global Poverty Act Obama supports.

Barack Obama's Global Tax Proposal Up for Senate Vote
By Cliff Kincaid
Feb 12, 2008
...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).

The U.N. says that “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.”

In addition to seeking to eradicate poverty, that declaration commits nations to banning “small arms and light weapons” and ratifying a series of treaties, including the International Criminal Court Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol (global warming treaty), the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The Millennium Declaration also affirms the U.N. as “the indispensable common house of the entire human family, through which we will seek to realize our universal aspirations for peace, cooperation and development.”

Jeffrey Sachs, who runs the U.N.’s “Millennium Project,” says that the U.N. plan to force the U.S. to pay 0.7 percent of GNP in increased foreign aid spending would add $65 billion a year to what the U.S. already spends. Over a 13-year period, from 2002, when the U.N.’s Financing for Development conference was held, to the target year of 2015, when the U.S. is expected to meet the “Millennium Development Goals,” this amounts to $845 billion. And the only way to raise that kind of money, Sachs has written, is through a global tax, preferably on carbon-emitting fossil fuels.

Obama’s bill has only six co-sponsors. They are Senators Maria Cantwell, Dianne Feinstein, Richard Lugar, Richard Durbin, Chuck Hagel and Robert Menendez. But it appears that Biden and Obama see passage of this bill as a way to highlight Democratic Party priorities in the Senate.

The House version (H.R. 1302), sponsored by Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), had only 84 co-sponsors before it was suddenly brought up on the House floor last September 25 and was passed by voice vote. House Republicans were caught off-guard, unaware that the pro-U.N. measure committed the U.S. to spending hundreds of billions of dollars.

http://www.nationalledger.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=22&num=18845

Just to get your attention, it INCLUDES PROVISIONS TO BAN ALL SMALL ARMS AND LIGHT WEAPONS!

Further, it would FORCE the United States to give 7/10ths of one percent of our ENTIRE Gross Domestic Product to the UNITED NATIONS, so that THEY could give it out to the "poor" in OTHER nations. WE no longer would have a say in how much foreign aid we GIVE.

That's nearly 900 BILLION DOLLARS IN FOREIGN AID OVER a 13 year period!

Further, it would force the United States to sign the Kyoto Protocol.

http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration/ares552e.pdf

http://www.migunowners.org/forum/showthread.php?t=24134

Dan... Quote:
Originally Posted by Cherokee
Now I see what has happened. From the UN's Millennium Declaration. And I quote, from page 3: http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration/ares552e.pdf
Not that the Bill has anything to do with the Millenium Declaration, in of itself.

Now I see where the alarm is coming from on this.

The goals of the UN are to disarm the citizenry. We all know that. The alarm against the UN is for a good reason and even the NRA gets that. I'm not paranoid of the UN, but it's good to keep an eye on them in the distance and watch the small arms conferences.

This bill expresses support of the UN goals, and that's the reason for the alarm. The bill's sponsor is a gun grabber adding to the alarm. This bill does not adopt those goals in a contractual sense. It just spends a lot of tax money. It's a bad bill by a gun grabber supporting an organization that supports gun grabs, but not a gun grabbing bill in that sense...

http://www.migunowners.org/forum/showthread.php?t=24134

Conservative blogs, talk shows attack world-poverty bill — and Obama
By Les Blumenthal | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Wednesday, February 20, 2008 email | print tool nameclose
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WASHINGTON — It isn't a high-profile bill, but the Global Poverty Act has lit up the conservative blogosphere, and even Rush Limbaugh has gotten into the act.

Quietly approved by the House of Representatives last fall with bipartisan support, the bill, sponsored by Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., would require the president to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to help reduce extreme global poverty.

Conservative critics, including Limbaugh, Tony Perkins — who heads the Family Research Council — and others, claim that the measure would cost U.S. taxpayers $845 billion over the next dozen or so years. They also charge that it would tie the United States to the United Nations Millennium Declaration, which, among others things, calls for banning "small arms and light weapons" and ratifying the Kyoto global-warming treaty, the International Criminal Court Treaty and the Convention on Biological Diversity.

They've sought to tie the legislation to much broader goals promoted by the United Nations, including that nations spend 0.7 percent of their gross national product on eradicating poverty and providing other assistance to the world's poor.

Smith says there's no link and points out that there's no additional spending mandated in his bill.

He said the attacks weren't aimed at him but at Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, whom he recruited last year to be the bill's chief Senate sponsor. Smith is the chairman of the Obama campaign in Washington state.

Limbaugh, according to a transcript of his radio show, last week called the bill an effort to "soak U.S. taxpayers again to fund global, liberal feel-good garbage."

Smith said he wasn't surprised that his bill had come under attack.

"Anything can happen in the blogosphere," he said. He denies that his bill would have the dire consequences Limbaugh and others claim it would.

"It doesn't do any of those things," Smith said. But he said it was time for the United States to take an aggressive role in helping the 1 billion people worldwide who lived on less than $1 a day.

The dustup began last week when Cliff Kincaid, a columnist for Accuracy in Media (www.aim.org), a conservative news-media watchdog organization, dismissed the bill and linked it to an effort by Democrats to burnish Obama's legislative credentials. His original column was widely distributed on Web sites ranging from www.fishingbuddy.com to www.capitolhillcoffeehouse.com.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/28265.html

United Nations Association of the USA (UNA-USA)
Better World Campaign (BWC)
2008 Presidential Candidate Questionnaire
on US-UN Relations

Response from Barack Obama

4. Climate Change

Anthropogenic climate change is the most far-reaching environmental challenge facing the international community, requiring diplomatic, economic, scientific and technological cooperation. The United Nations can provide the most effective platform for much of this cooperation. Under the framework of the United Nations, the international community is beginning the process of drafting a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which expires in 2012. The goal of these negotiations will be the establishment of a comprehensive international agreement for preventing catastrophic climate change.

Do you support development of a post-2012 framework for addressing climate change under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change? What steps will you take to help foster international cooperation to combat climate change?



I strongly support the development of a post-2012 global framework for addressing climate change, and will reverse the Bush administration’s intransigent rejection of binding emissions targets – a rejection that almost derailed the first round of negotiations last December in Bali under the framework convention. I have pledged to create a cap on carbon emissions in the United States designed to reduce our emissions by 80% from 1990 levels by the year 2050. I will also press other key countries to implement commensurate measures to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

I have called for the creation of a new Global Energy Forum of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters. We cannot ignore the developing countries that are being worst affected by climate change and force them to tackle adaptation on their own. To that end, I will call on the Global Energy Forum to launch the Global Energy and Environment (GEE) Initiative to bring developing countries into the global effort to develop alternative sources of energy and prepare for the ravages of a changing climate. GEE will help build the capacity of the developing world to participate profitably in the global carbon market, promote the transfer of viable and affordable technologies, and ensure that a substantial portion of increased research and development funds is allocated to technology adaptation appropriate to the poorest countries.

I will incorporate climate change and energy development goals into all tools of U.S. economic engagement, including assistance programs, trade agreements, and debt relief initiatives and help developing countries prepare for climate change by spurring the development of an open-source, real time mapping system to forecast the impacts of climate change country-by country. An Obama administration will also create an

Emerging Market Energy Fund, using USG funding to leverage the investment and venture capital needed to expand the developing world’s renewable energy portfolio.

http://www.unausa.org/site/pp.asp?c=fvKRI8MPJpF&b=3879851