What is the Global Poverty Act?

President Johnson Started a program to wipe out poverty in the US. During the 60's and it is estimated that we have spent 40 Trillion Dollars to wipe out poverty. The classic is he visited a man in the hills Georgia and told the man he would fix his leaky roof and get a good road for the man to take his produce to market. It is reported that almost 40 yeas later the roof still leaks and the road is still bad. What have we achieved? A higher crime rate, more single parent families, more poverty, and a third generation on welfare. If Senator Obama were truly interested in helping third world countries he would work to insure that the free market worked and people had the opportunity to advance.

The only things to consider in this or add to this Foreign Aid bills/spending is typically $20+ billion per year (that could be added to the supposed 845 billion total). Someone else pointed out it might be added up over years. Other items http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-1302 [i]"(8) At the summit of the Group of Eight (G-8) nations in July 2005, leaders from all eight countries committed to increase aid to Africa from the current $25 billion annually to $50 billion by 2010, and to cancel 100 percent of the debt obligations owed to the World Bank, African Development Bank, and International Monetary Fund by 18 of the world's poorest nations." "(1) Continued investment in existing United States initiatives related to international poverty reduction, such as the United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act of 2003, the Millennium Challenge Act of 2003, the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, and trade preference programs for developing countries, such as the African Growth and Opportunity Act."[/i] Now for those, the increase in annual aid spending to Africa would translate to more spending by the US, at least double the funding if taken at face value. The second item is already in place in terms of spending, that can be found on the white house site and other services. $3 billion is the spending on Millennium Development Goal, to put it in some perspective. The continued investment can have vagaries to it. On one hand, it could just mean continued investment with reasonable increases (as what happens with most government spending). On the other hand, there maybe significant increases in spending. Nothing is certain with the latter possibility. Jor, some sources might be forging numbers or otherwise calculating costs over a period of time. Just about most government spending/budget items over several years time would also result in some astonishing numbers (hundreds of billions or trillions). Personal opinion, I would want to see more spending at home. I do support spending and foreign aid due to the poverty situation, but there should be focus on programs and issues in the nation. Even before that, there should be scrutiny over current spending... really it should be called investment, but I know no one will listen to that. I mean, government spending is supposed to help the nation, keep it running and it is an investment in improving the nation. Several programs can easily be called into question when looked at as investments (transportation, education, other social programs). The amount of spending and the resulting product are seriously imbalanced, unfortunately for the worse.

Just because it will only cost pennies per person does not mean it is a good idea. Just because Republican support this bill does not mean it is a good one either. I for one am tired of people who think it is our job to keep this whole world aflot.

Stop and look at where OUR charity has gotten us! When any country needs help the USA is there. When we (USA) needs help we are alone.... This is a bunch of nonsense and we should take care of our own before taking on others. It makes me sick to think about how much money gets wasted by our government in the name of "charity". We have people dieing every day because they can't afford their medication or even food. It's just another way for the rich to take more from the poor. I think it's all BS and Obama is in it up to his knees.

In retrospect, I'm not sure he knew it was a bad idea money-wise. It's from last year, before anyone would even consider that the economy was in trouble and people would soon start having big troubles all over financially. So I'm not sure I can really hold it to him that much. Now if he were to make that stupid of a mistake concerning a bill today, THEN I could really hold it against him, 'cause he knows full well how things stand today.