Obama’s Global Tax Proposal Up for Senate Vote

[GaryC 7]

Obama’s Global Tax Proposal Up for Senate Vote

AIM Column | By Cliff Kincaid | February 12, 2008

It appears the Senate version is being pushed not only by Biden and Obama, a member of the committee, but Lugar, the ranking Republican member.

A nice-sounding bill called the "Global Poverty Act," sponsored by Democratic presidential candidate and Senator Barack Obama, is up for a Senate vote on Thursday and could result in the imposition of a global tax on the United States. The bill, which has the support of many liberal religious groups, makes levels of U.S. foreign aid spending subservient to the dictates of the United Nations.

Senator Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has not endorsed either Senator Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton in the presidential race. But on Thursday, February 14, he is trying to rush Obama's "Global Poverty Act" (S.2433) through his committee. The legislation would commit the U.S. to spending 0.7 percent of gross national product on foreign aid, which amounts to a phenomenal 13-year total of $845 billion over and above what the U.S. already spends.

The bill, which is item number four on the committee's business meeting agenda, passed the House by a voice vote last year because most members didn't realize what was in it. Congressional sponsors have been careful not to calculate the amount of foreign aid spending that it would require. According to the website of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, no hearings have been held on the Obama bill in that body.

A release from the Obama Senate office about the bill declares, "In 2000, the U.S. joined more than 180 countries at the United Nations Millennium Summit and vowed to reduce global poverty by 2015. We are halfway towards this deadline, and it is time the United States makes it a priority of our foreign policy to meet this goal and help those who are struggling day to day."

The legislation itself requires 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."

The bill defines the term "Millennium Development Goals" as the goals set out in the United Nations Millennium Declaration, General Assembly Resolution 55/2 (2000).

The U.N. says that "The commitment to provide 0.7% of gross national product (GNP) as official development assistance was first made 35 years ago in a General Assembly resolution, but it has been reaffirmed repeatedly over the years, including at the 2002 global Financing for Development conference in Monterrey, Mexico. However, in 2004, total aid from the industrialized countries totaled just $78.6 billion-or about 0.25% of their collective GNP."

In addition to seeking to eradicate poverty, that declaration commits nations to banning "small arms and light weapons" and ratifying a series of treaties, including the International Criminal Court Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol (global warming treaty), the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The Millennium Declaration also affirms the U.N. as "the indispensable common house of the entire human family, through which we will seek to realize our universal aspirations for peace, cooperation and development."

Jeffrey Sachs, who runs the U.N.'s "Millennium Project," says that the U.N. plan to force the U.S. to pay 0.7 percent of GNP in increased foreign aid spending would add $65 billion a year to what the U.S. already spends. Over a 13-year period, from 2002, when the U.N.'s Financing for Development conference was held, to the target year of 2015, when the U.S. is expected to meet the "Millennium Development Goals," this amounts to $845 billion. And the only way to raise that kind of money, Sachs has written, is through a global tax, preferably on carbon-emitting fossil fuels.

Obama's bill has only six co-sponsors. They are Senators Maria Cantwell, Dianne Feinstein, Richard Lugar, Richard Durbin, Chuck Hagel and Robert Menendez. But it appears that Biden and Obama see passage of this bill as a way to highlight Democratic Party priorities in the Senate.

The House version (H.R. 1302), sponsored by Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), had only 84 co-sponsors before it was suddenly brought up on the House floor last September 25 and was passed by voice vote. House Republicans were caught off-guard, unaware that the pro-U.N. measure committed the U.S. to spending hundreds of billions of dollars.

It appears the Senate version is being pushed not only by Biden and Obama, a member of the committee, but Lugar, the ranking Republican member. Lugar has worked with Obama in the past to promote more foreign aid for Russia, supposedly to stem nuclear proliferation, and has become Obama's mentor. Like Biden, Lugar is a globalist. They have both promoted passage of the U.N.'s Law of the Sea Treaty, for example.

The so-called "Lugar-Obama initiative" was modeled after the Nunn-Lugar program, also known as the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, which was designed to eliminate weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union. But one defense analyst, Rich Kelly, noted evidence that "CTR funds have eased the Russian military's budgetary woes, freeing resources for such initiatives as the war in Chechnya and defense modernization." He recommended that Congress "eliminate CTR funding so that it does not finance additional, perhaps more threatening, programs in the former Soviet Union." However, over $6 billion has already been spent on the program.

Another program modeled on Nunn-Lugar, the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention (IPP), was recently exposed as having funded nuclear projects in Iran through Russia.

More foreign aid through passage of the Global Poverty Act was identified as one of the strategic goals of InterAction, the alliance of U.S-based international non-governmental organizations that lobbies for more foreign aid. The group is heavily financed by the U.S. Government, having received $1.4 million from taxpayers in fiscal year 2005 and $1.7 million in 2006. However, InterAction recently issued a report accusing the United States of "falling short on its commitment to rid the world of dire poverty by 2015 under the U.N. Millennium Development Goals..."

It's not clear what President Bush would do if the bill passes the Senate. The bill itself quotes Bush as declaring that "We fight against poverty because opportunity is a fundamental right to human dignity." Bush's former top aide, Michael J. Gerson, writes in his new book, Heroic Conservatism, that Bush should be remembered as the President who "sponsored the largest percentage increases in foreign assistance since the Marshall Plan..."

Even these increases, however, will not be enough to satisfy the requirements of the Obama bill. A global tax will clearly be necessary to force American taxpayers to provide the money.

http://www.aim.org/aim-column/obamas-globa...or-senate-vote/

[YuAndDan 153]

Why do virtually all democrats feel that they need to tax and spend. The average American cannot afford more taxes, with the cost of living going up, such as energy costs, food costs, etc..

We need to knock it off with all these "Feel Good" bills.

[Reynaldo 0]

OOOOO

Democrats want to tax us to death...

Damn socialists...

OOOOO

Bush has proven that tax cuts are the way to go. When he is leaves office, America will not be in the middle of a recession.

What a joke...

[GaryC 7]

Why do virtually all democrats feel that they need to tax and spend. The average American cannot afford more taxes, with the cost of living going up, such as energy costs, food costs, etc..

We need to knock it off with all these "Feel Good" bills.

This is so much more than that. It's a UN mandated tax on the USA. It's globalism taken to the extreme. These people will not be happy until everyone is equal, equally poor that is.

[Reynaldo 0]

This is so much more than that. It's a UN mandated tax on the USA. It's globalism taken to the extreme. These people will not be happy until everyone is equal, equally poor that is.

Wouldn't that change the definition of poverty and poor?

Can't we all get along?

Edited February 15, 2008 by Reynaldo

[Reynaldo 0]

I don't understand how republicans can make working people fear taxes this much.

Will America have to fail before Americans realize that small gov't is not that good of an idea?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I don't understand how republicans can make working people fear taxes this much.

Will America have to fail before Americans realize that small gov't is not that good of an idea?

I'll take a jab at this. I think they've been successful at selling it to working Americans because there is tangible evidence - they feel the pinch every payday, while the benefits of those taxes they pay are intangible or impossible for the average worker to see or feel. Combine it with the ongoing rhetoric of wasteful spending and Americans become disgruntled and disenfranchised with the money they are handing over to Uncle Sam.

Two candidates, Mike Huckabee and Mike Gravel have proposed a Fair Tax system that I think has a lot of potential. I understand the punitive feel that workers get when our paychecks are reduced from how much we work...and the more we work, we pay more. I'm all for a tax system which is linked to consumption rather than productivity.

Edited February 15, 2008 by Mister Fancypants

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Like a ####### the world just wants our money and the Pimps Libs are happy to oblige.

[Reynaldo 0]

I'll take a jab at this. I think they've been successful at selling it to working Americans because there is tangible evidence - they feel the pinch every payday, while the benefits of those taxes they pay are intangible or impossible for the average worker to see or feel. Combine it with the ongoing rhetoric of wasteful spending and Americans become disgruntled and disenfranchised with the money they are handing over to Uncle Sam.

Two candidates, Mike Huckabee and Mike Gravel have proposed a Fair Tax system that I think has a lot of potential. I understand the punitive feel that workers get when our paychecks are reduced from how much we work...and the more we work, we pay more. I'm all for a tax system which is linked to consumption rather than productivity.

What I don't get is why won't the people, instead of complaining they are paying too much taxes, demand public services to be better. I am not talking about socialist ####### like universal healthcare. I am talking about basic sh!t, like bridges not collapsing while people are crossing them. Minnesota was all tax cuts before that happened, 5 days later that douche Pawlenty increased taxes to help rebuild the bridge...

Tax cuts are targeted to the top 1% earners, not to the middle class.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I'll take a jab at this. I think they've been successful at selling it to working Americans because there is tangible evidence - they feel the pinch every payday, while the benefits of those taxes they pay are intangible or impossible for the average worker to see or feel. Combine it with the ongoing rhetoric of wasteful spending and Americans become disgruntled and disenfranchised with the money they are handing over to Uncle Sam.

Two candidates, Mike Huckabee and Mike Gravel have proposed a Fair Tax system that I think has a lot of potential. I understand the punitive feel that workers get when our paychecks are reduced from how much we work...and the more we work, we pay more. I'm all for a tax system which is linked to consumption rather than productivity.

What I don't get is why won't the people, instead of complaining they are paying too much taxes, demand public services to be better. I am not talking about socialist ####### like universal healthcare. I am talking about basic sh!t, like bridges not collapsing while people are crossing them. Minnesota was all tax cuts before that happened, 5 days later that douche Pawlenty increased taxes to help rebuild the bridge...

Tax cuts are targeted to the top 1% earners, not to the middle class.

I think it's just intangible - they are too far removed to see the connection. That and also a distrust that any program run by the government is going be shoddy and bureaucratic. When a bridge collapses though and people die, that's when they make a connection.

[GaryC 7]

I'll take a jab at this. I think they've been successful at selling it to working Americans because there is tangible evidence - they feel the pinch every payday, while the benefits of those taxes they pay are intangible or impossible for the average worker to see or feel. Combine it with the ongoing rhetoric of wasteful spending and Americans become disgruntled and disenfranchised with the money they are handing over to Uncle Sam.

Two candidates, Mike Huckabee and Mike Gravel have proposed a Fair Tax system that I think has a lot of potential. I understand the punitive feel that workers get when our paychecks are reduced from how much we work...and the more we work, we pay more. I'm all for a tax system which is linked to consumption rather than productivity.

What I don't get is why won't the people, instead of complaining they are paying too much taxes, demand public services to be better. I am not talking about socialist ####### like universal healthcare. I am talking about basic sh!t, like bridges not collapsing while people are crossing them. Minnesota was all tax cuts before that happened, 5 days later that douche Pawlenty increased taxes to help rebuild the bridge...

Tax cuts are targeted to the top 1% earners, not to the middle class.

The reason I posted this is because it isn't a tax on Americans to help Americans. It is a global tax on America to MANDATE a minimum level of aid to other countries. Not only that, it is a HUGE increase over what we are already giving. This is an example of what we will get if Obama is elected.

Jeffrey Sachs, who runs the U.N.'s "Millennium Project," says that the U.N. plan to force the U.S. to pay 0.7 percent of GNP in increased foreign aid spending would add $65 billion a year to what the U.S. already spends. Over a 13-year period, from 2002, when the U.N.'s Financing for Development conference was held, to the target year of 2015, when the U.S. is expected to meet the "Millennium Development Goals," this amounts to $845 billion. And the only way to raise that kind of money, Sachs has written, is through a global tax, preferably on carbon-emitting fossil fuels.

A global tax will clearly be necessary to force American taxpayers to provide the money.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

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What is the FairTax?

The FairTax plan is a comprehensive proposal that replaces all federal income and payroll based taxes with an integrated approach including:

* A progressive national retail sales tax.

* A prebate to ensure no American pays federal taxes on spending up to the poverty level.

* Dollar-for-dollar federal revenue neutrality.

* Repeal of the 16th Amendment through companion legislation.

"I'll vote for the FairTax if it comes up because I have made a promise that I will do anything to get rid of the income tax and the IRS, and repeal the 16th amendment and that FairTax certainly moves it in that direction." ~ Ron Paul

http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer

[britty 1]

Like a ####### the world just wants our money and the Pimps Libs are happy to oblige.

Amen.

(and Ive just noticed the quotation on your signature, amen to that too)

[Reynaldo 0]

The reason I posted this is because it isn't a tax on Americans to help Americans. It is a global tax on America to MANDATE a minimum level of aid to other countries. Not only that, it is a HUGE increase over what we are already giving. This is an example of what we will get if Obama is elected.

Jeffrey Sachs, who runs the U.N.'s "Millennium Project," says that the U.N. plan to force the U.S. to pay 0.7 percent of GNP in increased foreign aid spending would add $65 billion a year to what the U.S. already spends. Over a 13-year period, from 2002, when the U.N.'s Financing for Development conference was held, to the target year of 2015, when the U.S. is expected to meet the "Millennium Development Goals," this amounts to $845 billion. And the only way to raise that kind of money, Sachs has written, is through a global tax, preferably on carbon-emitting fossil fuels.

A global tax will clearly be necessary to force American taxpayers to provide the money.

But, Gary, America has been screwing other countries since the fall of the British Empire...

Most of these people need aid because capitalists in this country fcuked their country's economy.

Edited February 15, 2008 by Reynaldo

[Reynaldo 0]

Gary, would it be ok to you if you personally could not pay that tax, but, by doing so, one kid would starve to death somewhere in Africa?

Would that be worth 1% of your income?