The short story: the current 2009 budget draft cuts $4 billion from the international affairs budget, meaning a reduction of $1 billion from this year.
It's this money that supports our family members in Africa and around the world: Nokuphila, who is struggling with HIV; those children in Swaziland who may die of TB next year like Justice did; all those who in Mhlosheni who suffer from Malaria.
Read the post below and click the link to sign a petition that supports Senator Gordon Smith's amendment to restore these funds.
Our friends need us.
Dear Michael,
While the presidential candidates were responding to your pressure and announcing their plans to visit Africa, Congress was putting together the 2009 budget. And the numbers don't look good.
As it stands today, the Senate is considering a $4 billion cut from the president's 2009 international affairs budget. What's most shocking is that this would represent a cut of $1 billion from this year's funding, a huge loss at a time when we are poised to do so much to combat extreme poverty and global disease. Slashing this funding would be simply devastating to people like those surviving HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis thanks in part to the help America provides.
Thankfully, we're not the only ones who've noticed the problem, and Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Gordon Smith (R-OR) have introduced an amendment to restore $2.6 billion to the international affairs budget, to match the House of Representatives funding level.
Here is where we come in. We only have one week to get the majority of the Senate to support this effort. It's up to us to take action and make sure that our senators pass a budget that reflects our values. So we're launching a petition asking the Senate to support this amendment:
You can add your name here:
http://www.one.org/2009budget/o.pl?id=254-3425028-2Jje.p&t=2
Petition text:
In the great American tradition of helping others help themselves, we, the undersigned, ask that the U.S. Senate pass the Durbin-Smith amendment to restore $2.6 billion to the international affairs budget.
Increasing the size of the international affairs budget is vital to increasing the amount the U.S. gives to poverty-focused development assistance. The international affairs budget funds all the proven solutions that we call for time and again: lifesaving AIDS medications, basic education, access to clean water, and many more programs helping people work their way out of poverty.
To save these programs, we've set an aggressive goal of gathering 60,000 signatures before we deliver the petition to every senator next week. Please add your name:
http://www.one.org/2009budget/o.pl?id=254-3425028-2Jje.p&t=3
The fight over the international affairs budget is just the first important step to making sure that we keep our promise to help the world's poorest people. Later in the year, we'll work to make sure that enough of the international affairs budget goes to the programs that are making a real difference in the developing world. But that fight will be much more difficult if we don't get a high level of funding for the poorest among us here and now.
Thank you for your voice,
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1 comment:
Thanks for writing this.
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