[Comment] Bush out of touch on global poverty

From the Toronto Star
President George Bush kept a remarkably straight face Tuesday when he strode to the microphones with Britain's prime minister, Tony Blair, and told the world that the United States will now get around to spending $674 million (U.S.) in emergency aid that Congress had already approved for needy countries.

That's it.

Not a penny more to buy treated mosquito nets to help save the thousands of children in Sierra Leone who die every year of preventable malaria. Nothing more to train and pay teachers so 11-year-old girls in Kenya may go to school. And not a cent more to help Ghana develop the kind of programs it needs to get legions of young boys off the streets.

Blair, who will be the host when the G-8, the club of eight leading economic powers, holds its annual meeting next month, is trying to line up pledges to double overall aid for Africa over the next 10 years. That extra $25 billion a year would do all those things, and much more, to raise the continent from dire poverty. Before getting to Washington, Blair had done very well, securing pledges of large increases from European Union members.

According to a poll, most Americans believe that the United States spends 24 per cent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 per cent. As Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia University economist in charge of the United Nations' Millennium Development Project, put it so well, the notion that there is a flood of American aid going to Africa "is one of our great national myths."

The United States currently gives just 0.16 per cent of its national income to help poor countries, despite signing the United Nations declaration three years ago in which rich countries agreed to increase their aid to 0.7 per cent by 2015. Since then, Britain, France and Germany have all announced plans for how to get to 0.7 per cent; America has not. The piddling amount Bush announced Tuesday is not even 0.007 per cent.

What is 0.7 per cent of the American economy? About $80 billion. That is about the amount the Senate just approved for additional military spending, mostly in Iraq. It's not remotely close to the $140 billion corporate tax cut last year.

This should not be the image Bush wants to project around a world that is watching American actions on this issue intently. At a time when rich countries are mounting a noble and worthy effort to make poverty history, the Bush administration is showing itself to be completely out of touch by offering such a miserly drop in the bucket. It's no surprise that Bush's offer was greeted with scorn in television broadcasts and newspaper headlines around the world. "Bush Opposes U.K. Africa Debt Plan," blared the headline on the AllAfrica news service, based in Johannesburg. "Blair's Gambit: Shame Bush Into Paying," chimed in the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia.

The American people have a great heart. President Bush needs to stop concealing it.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is an edited version of an editorial that appeared in the New York Times.