Thank You, Mother Jones, for Plugging Obama's Global Poverty Act

Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones blogs today on one of U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's most important pieces of legislation - the Global Poverty Act. This bill would commit the United States to "the reduction of global poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty, and the achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people, between 1990 and 2015, who live on less than $1 per day."

Stein is a strong, and much needed, booster of the Global Poverty Act:

The bill, which has a bi-partisan list of co-sponsors, is a recipe for reintegration into the world community, which suggests Obama sees aid not just as charity but as part of his foreign policy vision.

In April, NDN endorsed the Global Poverty Act, which the U.S. House of Representatives passed last spring. U.S. Rep. Adam Smith wrote and introduced the House bill. In our letter, we encourage the Senate to pass Obama's bill. Although little hope for that remains this year, we remain committed to advancing this legislation because we believe that eradicating global poverty can help to stem the rise of terrorism, spread of disease, environmental destruction, and political instability. The United States lags behind other developed countries in our commitment to helping the poorest of the poor. And as Stein points out, a war on global poverty would cost far less than our current war on terror:

Those critics [of the bill] argue that boosting American aid to UN-approved levels would cost $845 billion over 13 years, meaning the apparently horrifying prospect of waging a global war on poverty that costs along the lines of the war in Iraq, which the Congressional Research Service estimates has cost $653 billion in the six years since its initiation. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Iraq War will cost an additional $440 billion over the next ten years, assuming troop levels fall to 30,000 by 2010.

We greatly urge Obama and his allies to talk up this important piece of legislation -- in Obama's platform at the Convention, in Congress, on the blogs, in the mainstream media, and so forth. Along the way and down the road, NDN will remain committed advocates of the Global Poverty Act and we hope to work with Pres. Obama to make it a reality.