On September 25, the House passed, by voice vote, the Global Poverty Act (H.R. 1302). The House Foreign Affairs Committee approved the bill on July 31 (see The Source, 8/3/07).
Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the bill’s sponsor, said, “There are nearly 2.7 billion people in the world who are living on less than $2 a day. There are close to a billion people who are living on less than a dollar a day. Arguably, there is no greater problem facing the globe right now than poverty and the vast number of people who suffer from it, the countries and communities who, every day, get up, simply wondering whether or not they and their children are going to live to see the end of that day. It causes instability, disease, and all kinds of problems from one end of the globe to the other.”
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) said, “We certainly have serious needs and poverty right here in our own country. The suffering of the world’s extremely poor, however, is beyond the imagining of most Americans. Many Americans might be shocked to know just how many men, women, and children around the world die each hour of every day simply because they are too poor to obtain food, shelter, or basic medical care. While we quite often see the fatal impact of famines or natural disasters, we rarely see the images of the ongoing suffering caused by persistent hunger and chronic poverty…let us realize that the cost of not acting is not only hopelessness and unrest throughout the world, but is also terrorism and confrontation and wars that can be avoided if these programs work.”
