Bush Again Makes U.S. the Laggard in
Efforts to Address Global Economic Injustice
December 20, 2001
Britain has asked
the United States, along with the rest of the industrialized world, to join
it in doubling the amount of money spent on global antipoverty
programs. The effort would be akin to a global Marshall Plan "to
improve education and health for the world's poorest people."
While several European
countries and Canada are receptive to the idea of increasing foreign aid,
not the U.S.
Contrary to what many
American's think, the U.S. spends far less a percentage
of its Gross Domestic Product on foreign aid than any other industrialized
nation. Many of those other countries, for their size, actually give
several times as much as we do, and one is literally ten times more
generous than we are.
Our continued stinginess
should come as no surprise. After all, last July President Bush
continued the U.S. pattern of talking a good game but refusing to pony up
the funds. Bush was proposing
that aid to the poorest nations be made in the form of grants, not loans,
since those countries were already overburdened by debt:
"The needs are many
and undeniable," Mr. Bush said. "And they are a challenge to our
conscience and to complacency. A world where some live in comfort and
plenty, while half of the human race lives on less than $2 a day, is
neither just, nor stable."
The only problem was, Bush
declined to provide more money to finance the grants.
And of course, look who the
poor British chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, had to lobby for his
global Marshall Plan idea -- Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.
O'Neill, in an interview with the
British Financial Times, has called for:
- abolishing taxes on
corporations
- abolishing capital gains
taxes
- drastically reducing or
eliminating Social Security
- drastically reducing or
eliminating Medicare
If O'Neill doesn't even care
about providing for the needy inside the U.S., he certainly is not going to
lend a sympathetic ear to a plea to help the oppressed poor outside our
borders -- all of which is pretty much par for the course with the Bush
administration. |
