(Washington, DC)—Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, participated in a panel today at the Brookings Institution to respond to the release of the HELP Commission's report from their study of U.S. Foreign Development Assistance.
Hallelujah! This report is remarkable and could not have come at a better time. It is amazing that one of the few things Republicans and Democrats can agree about is foreign aid.
The diverse members of this commission have joined together to urge that our next president and Congress hammer out a basic agreement on what we want U.S. foreign assistance to achieve and how we are going to get that done – a rewrite of the outdated Foreign Assistance Act. Bread for the World looks at all this from the perspective of what is good for hungry and poor people, and we find ourselves agreeing with nearly all of the HELP Commission's recommendations.
But three of the commissioners – Leo Hindery, Jeff Sachs and Gayle Smith – argue that the Commission did not go far enough, and we think they are right on each of their four main points:
· U.S. assistance should be focused on overcoming hunger and poverty in the world. The main problem with U.S. foreign assistance has been confusion about what it is supposed to achieve. The President and Congress need to agree on the purposes of U.S. foreign assistance, and reducing poverty should be the main purpose. One of the most exciting and sacred things happening in our time that the world is making progress against hunger and poverty, and I want my country to play an active role in this great liberation.
· Funding for poverty-focused development assistance should be dramatically increased. We have some effective channels for foreign assistance, so there is no excuse for waiting to increase our investment in development.
· We should create a cabinet-level department of international development. The HELP Commission is clear that we need to keep development and security aid separate from each other. But putting development in a super State Department and in a budget that also includes the Defense Department would create programs with mixed motives. When we confuse development and security, we short-change poor people.
· Our country should take a more multilateral approach. We should use the Millennium Development Goals to frame our efforts, put more money through multilateral channels, and coordinate our bilateral program with what other countries are doing.
We have done a series of voter polls over the last five years, so we know that most U.S. voters agree with the thrust of what this minority report is proposing. (See the full report at www.alliancetoendhunger.org/Oct2007.pdf)
Bread for the World members are working to help make some of the report's suggestions a political reality by:
· Urging Congress and the President to agree on an increase in appropriations for poverty-focused development assistance.
· Urging Congress to reform the farm bill in ways that open opportunity for people in developing countries.
· Working with other groups to get candidates for president and Congress to stake out positions on how to reduce world hunger and poverty
· In 2008, Bread for the World and other campaigning groups will push for a $5 billion increase in poverty-focused development assistance and for passage of the Global Poverty Act. The Global Poverty Act will commit our country to the goal of cutting extreme poverty in half by 2015, and it will require our next president to consult early with various agency heads, including the agencies involved in trade and debt relief, and then send Congress a plan for effective U.S. support of the world's progress against poverty. This process should help get the administration working on an updated Foreign Assistance Act.
· And then in 2009, Bread for the World plans to be part of a major campaign to enact the HELP Commission's most important recommendation. We will urge the president and Congress to rewrite the Foreign Assistance Act, with a strong focus on what our country can do to help reduce hunger, poverty and disease in the world.
