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.
Senator Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has not endorsed either Senator Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton in the presidential race. But on Thursday, February 14, he is trying to rush Obama’s “Global Poverty Act” (S.2433) through his committee. The legislation 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.
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).
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.
It appears the Senate version is being pushed not only by Biden and Obama, a member of the committee, but Lugar, the ranking Republican member. Lugar has worked with Obama in the past to promote more foreign aid for Russia, supposedly to stem nuclear proliferation, and has become Obama’s mentor. Like Biden, Lugar is a globalist. They have both promoted passage of the U.N.’s Law of the Sea Treaty, for example.
The so-called “Lugar-Obama initiative” was modeled after the Nunn-Lugar program, also known as the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, which was designed to eliminate weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union. But one defense analyst, Rich Kelly, noted evidence that “CTR funds have eased the Russian military’s budgetary woes, freeing resources for such initiatives as the war in Chechnya and defense modernization.” He recommended that Congress “eliminate CTR funding so that it does not finance additional, perhaps more threatening, programs in the former Soviet Union.” However, over $6 billion has already been spent on the program.
Another program modeled on Nunn-Lugar, the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention (IPP), was recently exposed as having funded nuclear projects in Iran through Russia.
More foreign aid through passage of the Global Poverty Act was identified as one of the strategic goals of InterAction, the alliance of U.S-based international non-governmental organizations that lobbies for more foreign aid. The group is heavily financed by the U.S. Government, having received $1.4 million from taxpayers in fiscal year 2005 and $1.7 million in 2006. However, InterAction recently issued a report accusing the United States of “falling short on its commitment to rid the world of dire poverty by 2015 under the U.N. Millennium Development Goals…”
It’s not clear what President Bush would do if the bill passes the Senate. The bill itself quotes Bush as declaring that “We fight against poverty because opportunity is a fundamental right to human dignity.” Bush’s former top aide, Michael J. Gerson, writes in his new book, Heroic Conservatism, that Bush should be remembered as the President who “sponsored the largest percentage increases in foreign assistance since the Marshall Plan…”
Even these increases, however, will not be enough to satisfy the requirements of the Obama bill. A global tax will clearly be necessary to force American taxpayers to provide the money.
– Americans who would like their senators to know what they are voting on can contact them through information offered by GOPUSA.
Do not be fooled! Barak Obama’s call for National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank (NIRB) does not signal the return of the Democratic Party to the values of FDR and a revival of the Constitutional prerogative to ‘promote the general welfare’, but would rather provide more welfare for Wall Street and worse. Obama’s plan is nothing more than the direct means of instituting the Rohatyn-Rudman National Investment Corporation (NIC) plan called for in 2005, which in essence is a revival of Mussolini’s methods of corporatist control of the state in a politically correct post modern fashion..
When Senator Obama states that his National Investment Reinvestment Bank will magically turn $60 billion into trillions of dollars as he did in his Feb 13th Jamesville, WI speech, one can easily realize that the only way that this can happen is through the perverse magic of Wall Street. What would happen is that bonds floated by the NIRB will be bought on the open market, to then be speculated upon, securitized as derivatives, traded and ultimately used as collateral on the newly built infrastructure. What we will see is the emergence of an infrastructure bubble to replace the mortgage bubble, propped up by initial government expenditures towards infrastructure. This is just the start as Obama will fund the feel good ‘carbon credit’ swap to be the next blast of hot air to make Wall Street giddy. This is a key insight to a true understanding of what is going on. Bailout the financial powers with a clever plan that will raise money to then buy up hard assets, in other words the remaining wealth of our nation, as the meltdown crisis of over a quadrillion in derivatives losses grows and grows..
Besides artificially propping up the markets, Obama’s NIRB, as an initiation of the Rohatyn/Rudman infrastructure investment model, opens the door to the privatization of public assets. International predators and asset-strippers want to buy up public highways and impose cutthroat tolls, as they are already doing in many states. Then they run the turnpikes into the ground as cash cows while they mercilessly bilk the users. Privatization is a key goal of the Anglo-American financiers behind this scheme. Both the NIC and NIRB rely on the new darling of the markets, PPPs, known as public private partnerships. PPPs are the means by which market forces will dictate, and that is the word, the implementation of these projects. The argument is that the PPP will keep costs down, but in reality only because the private corporations, now controlling the public sector, will own the assets of what is being constructed. The PPP model is none other than the model implemented by Mussolini in his fascist corporate state. The creation of NIRB funds hark back to Hjalmar Schact’s ‘MEFO’ bills that created the speculative bubble of money so that the National Socialists could rearm Germany and fight World War II..
By a vote of 76-22, the Senate passed the Lieberman-Kyl amendment, which threatens to “combat, contain and [stop]” Iran via “military instruments.” Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) called the amendment “Cheney’s fondest pipe dream” and said it could “read as a backdoor method of gaining Congressional validation for military action.”
UPDATE Before the vote today, changes were made to the original amendment, with paragraphs three and four taken out completely. This paragraph was also added at the end:
“Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated on September 16, 2007 that “I think that the administration believes at this point that continuing to try and deal with the Iranian threat, the Iranian challenge, through diplomatic and economic means is by the preferable approach. That the one we are using. We always say all options are on the table, but clearly, the diplomatic and economic approach is the one that we are pursuing.”
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) spoke forcefully this afternoon on the Senate floor against the Lieberman-Kyl amendment. Durbin described the “sense of the Senate” legislation as a “dangerous effort to put us on the record for the use of military force in Iran.”
Noting that the language of the amendment suggests the use of “military instruments,” Durbin said:
What does that mean? Does that mean we are supporting the invasion of Iran? That we are supporting military tactics against Iran? Shouldn’t we be extra careful in the language of these resolutions when we find that the authorization for force for Iraq has dragged us into a war now in its fifth year, a war longer than World War II with bloody and deadly consequences for the United States and innocent Iraqis.
“I think it is dangerous language,” Durbin said, concluding his statement by saying he will oppose the amendment as it is currently written.
Due to early concerns raised by Sen. Jim Webb, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced this afternoon that the language of the Lieberman-Kyl amendment was being modified. The Senate then released new language, but as Carah Ong notes, the modifications did little to ease fears:
The new language allows for the use of U.S. military instruments inside of Iraq for dealing with Iran, but it still does not contain a measure to prevent a conflict from spilling beyond Iraq’s borders.
Due to the still outstanding concerns raised over the amendment, Reid announced this evening on the Senate floor that Lieberman-Kyl bill “will not have a vote in the near future.” Reid added that negotiations are ongoing and “maybe the night will be bring more clearness to the issue. But right now I think it’s fair to say there will be no votes tonight.”
ACTION ALERT:
Call Your Senators and Tell Them to Oppose H.R.1585/SA-2237 (800) 862-5530
(800) 833-6354
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White House Switchboard: 202-456-1414
White House Comment Line: 202-456-1111
President Bush’s comprehensive immigration reform, defeated in June, will make a second appearance this week when the Senate takes up various pro-amnesty amendments submitted to the Department of Defense funding bill, H.R. 1585, which is scheduled for debate.
While not “comprehensive” reform, the latest initiative attempts to pass key provisions of the earlier immigration measure piece by piece by attaching amendments to unrelated bills, a process critics characterize as “stealth.”
Sen. Dick Durbin
Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin, D-Ill., has re-introduced another version of his “Dream Act,” this time as an amendment (SA 2237) to the DOD funding bill.
The Dream Act would grant citizenship status to certain illegal aliens under 16 years of age who are pursuing college degrees and would allow them to receive in-state college tuition rates on an equal basis with U.S. citizens.
Steve Elliot, president of Grassfire.org, told WND his group plans to launch next week a nationwide awareness campaign to voice opposition to the Durbin amendment.
According to Numbers USA, the Dream Act amendment allows an illegal alien to remain in the U.S. on a track headed for citizenship, provided:
1. the illegal alien can demonstrate continuous presence in the U.S. for five years and was not yet 16 years old upon initial entry;
2. the illegal alien is of “good moral character” and is not inadmissible on criminal grounds or because the illegal alien is a national security risk; an
3. the illegal alien has been admitted to an institution of higher education, has attained a high school diploma, or has obtained a GED in the U.S.
Critics charge the Dream Act is a free pass to millions of illegal aliens, especially given the rampant documentation and identity theft fraud accompanying illegal immigration for decades.
One set of amendments that won’t be debated are three filed last spring by Sen. John Cornyn, R.-Texas. SA 2140, SA 2141, and 2142 would greatly expand H-1B visas, granting U.S. corporations an increased number of immigrants, largely from India, to compete on a low-cost basis with U.S. college-trained graduates with comparable technical skills.
Cornyn co-chairs the U.S.-India Caucus in the Senate along with Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.
Sen. Cornyn’s office assured WND yesterday the senator has no current intention of offering these amendments at this time to the DOD funding bill being debated this week.
“It’s getting late and it’s time to pass the Department of Defense funding bill,” a spokesman for Cornyn’s office told WND, “but we don’t see the advantage of tacking on a lot of extraneous measures to the bill that have nothing to do with national defense.”
Cornyn’s H-1B amendments would have increased by several hundred thousand the number of technically-trained immigrants allowed to work in the U.S., despite evidence many H-1B visa workers remain in the U.S. after their visas have expired.
An article written by globalization-advocates Kenneth Scheve, a political science professor at Yale, and Matthew Slaughter, an economics professor at Dartmouth, in the July/August issue of the Council on Foreign Relations magazine, Foreign Affairs, worries that recently released data will cause a backlash against “free trade” measures, given the adverse impact on U.S. earnings since George W. Bush took office as president.
Scheve and Slaughter cite U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics studies demonstrating 96.6 percent of all U.S. workers – including college educated and technically trained-workers – have lost real wages since 2000.
The only wage earners who have gained real wages since 2000 are a “thriving elite” of CEOs who head multi-national corporations and the MBAs, Ph.D.s, and lawyers who advise these multi-nationals, according the Bureau data.
WND reported last week Cornyn’s offer of a side-by-side amendment to defeat an amendment by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., to remove funding from the Fiscal Year 2008 Department of Transportation appropriations bill for the department’s trucking demonstration project to allow Mexican trucks on U.S. highways.
During the debate, Cornyn offered a mistaken argument from the Senate floor that the U.S. had a “treaty obligation” under the North American Free Trade Act to allow Mexican trucks into the U.S.
The Senate never passed NAFTA as a treaty. Lacking the two-thirds vote needed for passage of a treaty in the Senate, President Clinton submitted NAFTA to Congress as a law.
WND reported the Dorgan amendment passed by a bipartisan vote of 75-23. The vote originally was 74-24, but Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C., later changed her tally.