Your Urgent Action is Needed TODAY!

If your Senators have cosponsored the legislation:

Call your Senator(s) and thank them for their cosponsorship of the Global Poverty Act (S.2433)--click here to double-check that they are already a cosponsor.  Tell them to ask Majority Leader Reid and Minority Leader McConnell to bring the Global Poverty Act to the floor for full Senate consideration.   Call 1-800-826-3688 as soon as possible but no later than July 25.  

[Note:  This toll-free number will connect you to the Capitol switchboard, where you will ask to be connected to your senator's office in order to leave your message. Find out who your senators are.]

Key points to make when you call:

• Thank you for showing your commitment to the world's poorest people by cosponsoring the Global Poverty Act.

• With time running out on the legislative calendar, please ask the Senate leadership to move this bill to the floor for full Senate consideration.

• The Global Poverty Act seeks to bring clarity, coordination, and accountability to our foreign assistance programs has already passed through the House and has bipartisan support in the Senate.

Background

As Congress approaches the end of the current legislative session, the Global Poverty Act (S. 2433) still awaits passage by the full Senate. This bill must be passed before the session ends, or the process will have to start all over again in the next Congress. The Global Poverty Act has already passed the full House and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and has gained 24 cosponsors in the Senate.

Your Senators have demonstrated their commitment to securing better assistance for poor and hungry people in our world by cosponsoring the Global Poverty Act.  Now, we need them to urge Senate leadership to move this bill to be considered by the full Senate.

The Global Poverty Act seeks to bring clarity, coordination, and accountability to our foreign assistance programs. Currently, U.S. global development policies and programs are scattered across more than 25 different federal agencies. Increased coordination is sorely needed to be effective. The act would require the president to develop and implement a coordinated strategy of U.S. aid, debt relief, and trade policies to meet the goal of cutting by half the number of people who live on less than $1 a day by 2015. The legislation would require regular reports to Congress on U.S. efforts to fight extreme poverty.

The Global Poverty Act does not establish any new programs. Instead, it highlights the fact that extreme poverty won't be solved by aid alone, but needs to be supported by good trade policy, debt cancellation, and public-private partnerships. These functions are currently scattered across the U.S. government. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the bill would cost less than $1 million to implement.

The Global Poverty Act (H.R. 1302) was introduced in the House of Representatives by Reps. Adam Smith (D-WA) and Spencer Bachus (R-AL) and collected 84 bipartisan cosponsors before it was passed on September 25, 2007. The Senate bill, S. 2433, was passed by the Foreign Relations Committee earlier this year and awaits the full approval of the Senate.