The truth is non-partisan

If you don't want the Senate to approve Sen. Obama's S. 2433 to set in
motion legislation to require the United States to spend hundreds of
billions of dollars of new United Nations-inspired foreign aid
spending by 2015, then please read on and an email message to your
senators. Please act now! This bill could come up for a vote in the
full Senate soon. The House has already passed its version of this
bill (H.R. 1302) by a voice vote on September 25, 2007.

In September 2000 the UN General Assembly adopted the "United Nations
Millennium Declaration ," a very comprehensive, nine-page document
that ends:
We solemnly reaffirm, on this historic occasion, that the United
Nations is the indispensable common house of the entire human family,
through which we will seek to realize our universal aspirations for
peace, cooperation and development. We therefore pledge our unstinting
support for these common objectives and our determination to achieve
them.

The Declaration's section on Development and Poverty Eradication sets
the goal "To halve, by the year 2015, the proportion of the world's
people whose income is less than one dollar a day."

Then, in 2002 the UN's International Conference on Financing for
Development in Monterrey, Mexico, established a goal for foreign aid
to impoverished nations - 0.7 percent of the gross national product
(GNP) of developed nations.

Next we have Senator Obama's S. 2433 Global Poverty Act of 2007 which
he introduced in the Senate on December 7, 2007. His bill is nearly
identical to a House bill (H.R. 1302) that was passed in the House by
a voice vote on September 25, 2007. The purpose of S. 2433 is:
To require 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.

Thus, S. 2433 does not authorize or appropriate any money to fight
global poverty, but only requires the President to develop a strategy
to achieve UN Millennium Development goals, such as halving the
proportion of people in the world who live on less than $1 per day by
2015. However, based on the 2002 UN goal of foreign aid spending of
0.7 percent of GNP by developed nations, it has been estimated by some
conservative commentators that achieving the Millennium Declaration's
development goal of poverty reduction could cost the U.S. over $800
billion by 2015.

Although the Millennium Declaration also contains a whole host of
other UN pet projects, such as greater UN regulation of light weapons
and imposing the Kyoto Protocol to reduce global warming on the U.S.,
these projects are not addressed by S. 2433.

One interesting aspect of this S. 2433 bill is that when the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee slightly amended the bill before reporting
it out of committee with a favorable recommendation on April 24, they
carefully went through the bill and wherever the words "United Nations
Millennium Development Goals" appear, they deleted the words "United
Nations." However, at the very end of the bill the committee was
forced to admit the UN connection with the Millenium Development Goals
when they explained:
The term "Millennium Development Goals" means the goals set out in the
United Nations Millennium Declaration, General Assembly Resolution
55/2 (2000) .

I believe there are better ways to provide relief in developing
countries. One way is to make donations through legitimate
non-government aid programs. Another is to oppose government farm
subsidies in developed countries. This would provide an even playing
field for developing nations.

In response to my concerns I sent the following letter to my senators.

Dear Senator Bond and Senator McCaskill,

Please vote NO on Senator Obama's Global Poverty Act of 2007 (S. 2433),
which would set in motion future legislation to add potentially hundreds
of billions of dollars of new foreign aid spending by 2015 to help carry
out the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals.

These goals were stated in the United Nations Millennium Declaration,
General Assembly Resolution 55/2 (2000) and are available at
http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration/ares552e.pdf.

The United States government should not be committing our nation to any
such huge increase in foreign aid spending, especially not for United
Nations programs. UN programs waste money and our contributions are not
appreciated. Our commitment to the UN is disproportional to the benefits
we receive as a nation.

I donate monthly to humanitarian services through my church. I believe
individual commitment and donations are a better approach to helping
others around the world.

Sincerely, John Fisher

For more information and to take action go to: http://capwiz.com/jbs/issues/alert/?alertid=11590351