After months of cruising along under most people's radar, Senator Obama's Global Poverty Act of 2007 (S. 2433) was reported out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with a favorable recommendation on February 13, 2008. Then it was placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar on April 24. This bill is based on H.R. 1302, the House's version of the Global Poverty Act of 2007, which the House passed by voice vote on September 25, 2007.

Here's the official summary of S. 2433:

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.

Here's a link to a three-minute video clip from the Glenn Beck TV Show about S. 2433:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2772068138487550221&q

Here are links to a couple of useful articles about S. 2433:

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=/Politics/archive/200802/POL20080225a.html

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=288920093794177

Please be very careful when studying what S. 2433 actually would do in the way of legislative approval for federal spending, foreign aid, potential UN taxes, etc. If you read the articles carefully, you'll see that S. 2433 does not authorize any new federal spending on foreign aid. It would only require the President to develop a comprehensive strategy for implementing the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals in accordance with the promises given by the U.S. government at various UN conferences.

So the dangerous thing about S. 2433 is not that it immediately authorizes new levels of foreign aid or UN taxes, etc. Rather, the dangerous thing is that it serves to strengthen the consensus of Congress and the President to greatly increase foreign aid to fulfill our nation's "commitments" to the UN's Millenium Development Goals. Some analysts believe that fulfilling the spirit of S. 2433 would mean increasing U.S. foreign aid by over $800 billion by 2015.

Certainly no amount of foreign aid is authorized by the U.S. Constitution, let alone $800 billion worth.

One interesting aspect of this S. 2433 bill is that when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee slightly amended the bill before reporting it out with a favorable recommendation, 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).

To email your Senators in opposition to S. 2433, go to http://www.capwiz.com/jbs/issues/alert/?alertid=11590351. This bill could be brought up for a vote by the full Senate at anytime after July 7.

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