A couple of bills pending in Congress, moving quietly with little fanfare and virtually no notice from the public, have the potential to draw another $920 billion from the U.S. Treasury.
Those who criticize Barack Obama for a lack of accomplishments in the Senate can give him credit for both of these.
Obama co-sponsored the Global Poverty Act and the Jubilee Act.Cliff Kincaid, writing for Accuracy in Media, aim.org, did an expansive piece on the two pieces of legislation last month.
AIM describes itself as "a non-profit, grassroots citizens watchdog of the news media that critiques botched and bungled news stories and sets the record straight on important issues that have received slanted coverage."
The Jubilee Act (S. 2166) would cancel the debts of 26 foreign countries that owe the U.S.
Seems odd that we would be canceling debts owed us at a time when we can't even pay our own, but that's just me.
Assistant Secretary For International Affairs Clay Lowery, who works for the Treasury Department, testified at a Senate hearing last April. He said, "The Jubilee Bill represents an unfunded international mandate to fully cancel roughly $75 billion worth of debts owed by the potentially eligible countries to official bilateral and multilateral creditors." He noted that this was over and above the $110 billion in debt reduction we're already granting to various countries.
John McCain isn't an official sponsor of the Jubilee Act yet, but he's apparently being pressured to get on board.
The Obama-sponsored Global Poverty Act has passed the House and Senator Joe Biden's Foreign Relations Committee. It's awaiting full Senate action.
The unique legislation calls the president and Congress to set aside 0.7 percent of the United States' gross national product to be distributed around the globe to relieve poverty.
Obama came up with the plan after the Bali Global Warming Conference called for a global carbon tax which critics have called a a redistribution, of sorts, of the wealth of industrialized nations to the poor worldwide.
AIM claims careful analysis of the legislation shows that the U.S. will have to pony up $845 billion in increased foreign aid spending over the 10-year life of the bill if it is signed into law.
A careful analysis of the legislation, as well as the follow-up 2002 U.N. Financing for Development Conference, which was designed to make the "goals" into a reality, leads to the conclusion that the U.S. will have to provide $845 billion in increased foreign aid spending, generated if necessary by a global tax on the American people.
At the Clinton Global Initiative meeting, Obama voiced his commitment to "embracing the Millennium Development Goals, which aim to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015. ... This will take more resources from the United States, and as president I will increase our foreign assistance to provide them," Obama said.
See, to me, that just seems like an enormous amount of money for U.S. taxpayers to be saddled with.
I understand that there is lots of poverty in the world - a billion people live on less than $1 a day, for example. And I am not averse to helping people.
But wouldn't the best way for us to help people worldwide be for us to get our economy on firm ground again?
As long as we're dragging along like we are, we drag the whole world with us.
Why not get our economy cooking again? Get rid of some of the massive debt we've amassed and then be the savior of the world.
So, basically, at a time when our economy is tanking and home mortgages are being foreclosed and people are losing jobs in this country, Obama is advocating we taxpayers shell out $920 billion in poor relief for the rest of the world.
At the same time, he's going to provide health care and free college and infrastructure improvements and all manner of other good stuff for us.
If Obama is elected, which, if you believe the polls seems quite likely, he will bring with him even stronger majorities of Democrats in the House and Senate.
That means legislation like the Jubilee Act and the Global Poverty Act are more likely to pass.
All I can say is, hang on to your wallets taxpayers, an Obama administration could turn out to be a wild ride.
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Noose Update
The owner of the noose I wrote last week gave me a call this week.
He was pretty upset with me because I suggested a noose with a black trash bag in it was a racist symbol.
He assured me it had nothing to do with racism. He noted that he had another noose on his property. This one with a white trash bag and a McCain sign.
I wasn't at his house.
My photographer apparently didn't see the McCain noose.
The noose owner said the nooses were a political display, not a racist display.
