As Congress struggles to negotiate a budget deal
to keep the government running, the head of the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID) told lawmakers Wednesday that the GOP version of the budget
bill would result in the deaths of at least 70,000 children who depend on
American food and health assistance around the world.
"We estimate, and I believe these are very conservative
estimates, that H.R. 1 would lead to 70,000 kids dying," USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah testified before the House
Appropriations State and Foreign Ops subcommittee.
"Of that 70,000, 30,000 would come from malaria control
programs that would have to be scaled back specifically. The other 40,000 is
broken out as 24,000 would die because of a lack of support for immunizations
and other investments and 16,000 would be because of a lack of skilled
attendants at birth," he said.
The Republican bill, known as H.R.1, was passed by the House,
and would fund the government for the rest of fiscal 2011. It would effectively
cut 16 percent from the Obama administration's original fiscal 2011 request for
the international affairs account.
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.
(D-IL) pointed out that H.R. 1 would provide $430 million for the International
Disaster Assistance (IDA) account, which is 50 percent below the president's
fiscal 2011 request and 67 percent below fiscal 2010 levels.
Shah said that such a cut "would be, really, the most
dramatic stepping back away from our humanitarian responsibilities around the
world in decades." The IDA account supports 1.6 million people in Darfur, so
halving the account would place 800,000 people at risk, he said.
"[T]his would lead to a significant amount of reduction in
feeding programs, medical programs and food and water programs for people who
are incredibly vulnerable," he added.
Shah was also testifying in defense of the administration's
fiscal 2012 budget request, which also faces the axe on Capitol Hill.
Subcommittee Chairwoman Kay Granger
(R-TX) opened the hearing by announcing that the administration's fiscal 2012
request was dead on arrival.
"While I understand the value of many of these important
programs, the funding request for next year is -- is truly unrealistic in
today's budget environment," she said. "We simply cannot fund everything that
has been funded in the past. And we certainly cannot continue to fund programs
that are duplicative and wasteful."
Granger said she would support USAID programs that have
national security implications or contribute to the ongoing missions in Iraq,
Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Her Democratic counterpart, Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY), said that national
security is threatened by instability in other parts of the world as well.
"Drastic cuts to USAID would risk a great deal in stability
and security around the world which could spawn the kinds of threats that cost
this country the lives of men and women in uniform and billions in treasure,"
she said.
Shah argued that foreign assistance is crucial to the long
term economic recovery because it helps develop markets for American goods.
"USAID's work also strengthens America's economic security.
By establishing links to consumers at the bottom of the pyramid, we effectively
position American countries to enter more markets and sell more goods in the
economies of the future, promoting exports and creating American jobs," he
said.
This is typical of the Democrats, cut the bureaucrats. Also the Democrats kill more than this annually with abortions. This is standard operating procedure for this administration, tar opponents with one big brush and simply ignore the truth and facts. Misleading the general public is simple if you use emotional arguments. BUt the time is coming when that won't work, too many lies and half truths tend to wear thin after while
Don't forget that it was the far left that required African countries to ban DDT if they wanted to receive aid in the first place. This act alone cost MILLIONS of lives; especially in children as they were infected with Malaria from Mosquito's. Did they care? No. Their anwer to their guilt is to have everyone else contribute to buy netting for their beds.
That's got to be one of the dumbest things I've ever heard in my life.
Kill children? Just like Schumer is coaching all his people to say the proposed cuts are extreme?
Everything is emotion with these people, and the best way to deal with it is by using brute force. They're weak people, they always were. Without public employee and union money behind them, they're nothing. You hit them square in the head with a baseball bat, and when they cry and scream...you hit 'em again! Eventually, even they will have had enough.
Eventually, they'll be forced to concede. We can't borrow any more money. The Chinese are fed up. Our bankers with allied nations in Europe are fed up. Unemployment remains high because Wall Street doesn't know from one day to the next what Obama and his goons have planned.
When this is all over and Republicans take back everything they've lost since 2006, I can't help but think the Left in this country will be in a VERY bad way...bad enough that we just might have that civil war my history professor was predicting for the United States about twenty years ago. Maybe it's just time to fight it out and get rid of all this trash.
I agree. Liberals kill their babies by the millions but cry if their "public assistance" is cut off. Losers from Day 1 of their lives. Cut the budget and then there will be fewer losers to waste the public money of HONEST, DECENT TAXPAYERS.
Yea 50 mil and counting yet they somehow someway can still get away with claiming they do this 'all for the children"...yea, like John Wayne Gacy..X 1,666,666 that is...
DEAR SIR VIOLENCE IS NEVER THE ANSWER WHETHER AGAINST A POOR DEFENSELESS BABY OR AN ADULT OF A PERSUASION THAT YOU DO NOT LIKE...............and on top of that the statements you have made are misleading do you forget what is a PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRAT another word for a communist....these communists are like the rest of the communists when they take over they KILL AND KILL AND KILL......... check out youtube and look at vids of communists being interviewed during a protest I can see these people CAPABLE of the usual communist actions ........something i found disturbing in the article is where they will keep aide going AGAIN IF YOU READ THIS MONEY THAT THEY ARE GOING TO SPEND IS ALL POLITICAL......USA SECURITY SO THAT MEANS SUPPORTING WHICH SIDE THE ONES THAT LIKE US OR THE ONES THAT DONT I WANT TO SEE WHO IS GOING TO GET THE MONEY THEY ARE GOING TO SEND OUT
Federal spending was 3% of GDP in 1930. Now it's 25% and this guy says cutting it to 22% will kill 70,000 children. It is so outrageously absurd I can not find the words... That people would actually consider it... that people would respond this way to the honest attempts of elected officials to address a crippling deficit is, I must admit, disheartening. Heaven help us. Is all intellectual integrity lost?
The Democrats and O'bama didn't mind sending all our manufacturing jobs overseas or giving all our money away to Wall Street Bankers--How many American kids are suffering because of their stupid politics?
I grieve for our country that our rhetoric has devolved to the nasty rants I just read here. How can we possibly solve our problems if we demonize each other?
I’m guessing that few if any of the people commenting here have ever been to a country where much of the population lives on less than $2 a day. Where children die of diarrhea! Really - are we ok with that?
We could do so much more to stabilize the world and further our own interests if we spent less on military interventions in failed or failing states and more on development assistance - btw, not handed over to some corrupt leader but focused on community-based, results-oriented development projects - to prevent those states from failing in the first place.
The world is a small place - and we are all neighbors. Surely there are better ways to discuss these issues than with name calling and hyperbole.
I don't think it's a smart move to equate budget legislation to killing children. But some of the things you all have said embarrass me and make me sad for our country just as much as the government does. Our country has never been so divided in politics and nothing is being solved on either end. Some of you talked about abortions killing children and then about killing democrats. This eye for an eye mentality will get us no where. I have news for everyone. Both parties mislead and misinform the public. Republicans are just as guilty. They misinformed us right into a war we should never have been in that has cost us billions of dollars and thousands of lives. They would rather slander climate change and ignore pure science for the sake of oil lobbyists. All of your blunt hatred towards the opposite party, inability to tolerate opinions, finger pointing and frankly, ignorant rants remind me why our country is in the state it's in. It's not just a dysfunctional government that's ruining our country. There is no middle ground anymore. It's extreme republicans versus extreme democrats. It's all becoming a blame game and nothing is being resolved. Everything is about votes, lobbyists controlling decision making in congress and the next election on both sides. What about the good of the people? It's both parties that are injecting guilt, misinformation and intolerance into our country and I'm disgusted by all of it. Thank you all for reminding me that even my countries citizens have taken on the disgusting habits of the government that only create hate and more conflict.
This is typical of the Democrats, cut the bureaucrats. Also the Democrats kill more than this annually with abortions. This is standard operating procedure for this administration, tar opponents with one big brush and simply ignore the truth and facts. Misleading the general public is simple if you use emotional arguments. BUt the time is coming when that won't work, too many lies and half truths tend to wear thin after while
Democrats always lie; remember when they passed Social Security? They promised it would only be voluntary and then they would only tax the first $1,200 you made. Remember income tax? They promised that it would only apply to the top 10% income earners and it would only be temporary. Makes you wonder what the next 60 years will bring besides crushing debt from Democratic Programs. Soon the people that do work will be tired of having it taken away from them by the gov’t to give to people who produce nothing. An when the rich quit being rich, where will you then get the money?
Just think how many kids could have been saved on the $1,500 weekly budget for liquor on Pelosi's Air Force Plane. That was the cost reported by the New York Times and Washington Post. Just imagine how much money would have been saved if she didn't have a government plane at her beck and call when she was speaker of the house. Just make Congress pay the real cost of their healthcare, subsidised meals and haircuts and you'll have more money to save 700,000 children world-wide.
You either pay off your debt or go bankrupt. How many kids can you save when you have no money?
How many kids are we killing now by conversion of perfectly good foodstuffs into ethanol?
Cornmeal and other so-called "surplus" agricultural products can go a long way to helping to eliminate hunger in the world, but NOOOOO, we gotta make Ethanol!
Perfect point, how many kids is Obama killing with this program that takes the food from mouths and puts it into gas tanks. How much fuel do you think it takes, to haul the seed, plant the seed, power the pumps to water the fields, transport fertilizers, harvest the grain, transport it, process it into fuel and then transport it to where it is used? I think we might have negative amount after you add it all up.
These liberal bureaucrats can use all the bombastic hyperbole they want but all they do is demonstrate a lack of understand regarding a very basic concept regarding our fiscal situation, which is that WE ARE BROKE. Eventually the international community is not going to let us just print money ad nauseum; there will be consequences and we are already seeing them vis a vis the massive increases in commodity costs, increase in price in both gold and silver, and meaningful efforts to replace the U.S. dollar as the currency on which international business is transacted. And some moron is worried about how much money we give away to non-U.S. citizens? That is the LEAST of our problems.
This is a characteristic liberal democrat response. Whenever they have nothing of substance to offer, they attempt to Distort, Deflect, Divert, or Destroy. There is absolutely nothing included within the GOP's proposed cuts that would kill anybody!
No more guilt. The democrats have played that card for the last time. We're broke and sinking. I want to save my own children. Let the UN do what the UN should do. Let the 'spectator' nations that have been riding the US' coat tails pick up the slack.
Isn't that just a bit ironic? Obama is the biggest cheerleader for abortion no matter how far along the Mom is and now they want to tell us they care for kids. Really? How about the millions you kill each year with my tax dollars?
This is as slimy, repugnant, amoral a technique that I have ever heard.
1st who says the forecast is accurate?
2nd what about someone else stepping in who can better afford doing this, like China or India?
3rd What about the killing of starving kids in the USA when the economy collapses.
I had to read it again. I was beginning to wonder when the last outbreak of malaria hit the US. Not one in my lifetime so far yet.
I wonder why so much of our money is spent in international aid. We usually help out countries tha thave such corrupt governments that the aid money rarely gets wheree it is needed mosy
This is such a load of schit! Anyone that voted Obama and the rest of these lying SOB's should be ashamed of themselves. This country has gone to hell and it started with the 1960's bunch of dope smoking strung out waste cases. The so-called journalists in this country are just as much to blame...they let these people get away with making these statements and never question them on the accuracy. What a joke...and there are idiots out there that will believe this...and the vote and breed.
I was going to say something. No reason to do so. There is no reasoning with liberals. Kill babies in the womb. Support the waste of food with ethanol.
Must be food dye or something in the water. Or the wine and alcohol provided by the lobbyists.
What a sick nation we are. What a sick and foolish world. Jesus is coming and boy is He pissed. You guys are just waiting for judgment day. You do not care, but you make me sick. And that is exactly what you want.
70,000 kids "around the world". Let's think about that for a minute. Since when is it the responsibility of the American taxpayer to ensure that all the children have enough to eat? Where are the people of the governments of these 70,000 children? I have been to some of these places. Places like Ethiopia back in the 80s when tons and tons of food and grain and supplies were sent to Ethiopia just to rot on the docks because the government of Ethiopia was trying to starve a sector of it's citizens. Ethiopia has some of the most fertile soil in the world and the reason they could not grow food was because the government turned off their irrigation, else they would have had more food than they would know what to do with.
But I digress. Again, since when is it the American taxpayer's responsibility to subsidize the bad decisions and greed of foreign dictators? Where is the UN? Where is the UNFP or UNICEF or USAID or any number of United Nations organizations set up to do just that? You know, the United Nations, an organization we pay billions to each year in dues to handle such things.
I read this article and it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. It is not about starving children, it is about scared and desperate democrats resorting to anything they can to stay in power. In their eyes there is nothing tangible to complain about. Their own blindness precludes them from seeing the real problems in this nation. Real problems that require real actions to solve...not hollow rhetoric or promises of changes that are going to take place five or ten or fifteen years from now.
Obummer promised us change....he did not tell us the change would take place in 2014 (after he is out of office) or 2035 when he can no longer be held accountable for his actions when it is learned that he was all talk and his promises for the future fell short or never happened at all. I guess even then, he will blame it on Bush.
Yes and Shaw forgot to say that these cuts will result in dirty water, killing old age American's, and causing states to throw out Illegal aliens.
The Damnocrats NEVER stop the attacks on anything they did not front. We sent republicans to congress to defund Odumbo's health care. Why has it not happened.
THIS BANANA AND HIS WIFE BOTH ARE GOVERNMENT GIVE AWAY EMPLOYEES.....HE IS JUST ANOTHER BUREAUCRAT WITH A FOREIGN HERITAGE TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE OBAMA IS A GLOBAL DIVERSITY FAN....HE IS AN EMPTY SUIT....DID NOT GET THE MONEY SPENT IN HAITI AFTER THEIR DISASTER...BUT THAT WAS HIS JOB.
You have got to fricken kidding me. What is this? They went back to the '95 budget battle? What a bunch a cry baby losers democrats are. Any cut in the budget results in someone dying.... unless its from universal health care rationing then I guess its ok. How typical. How static. How pathetic. So, oh well... no balanced books for us. I guess we must print the money, be crush in the inflation and debt and turn the USA to ashes. Thank you traitor liberals! How progressive of you!!!
Yes, we should all look for moral guidance from the most immoral people on the planet who dismember their own babies, but protect their convicted murderers from the same fate because it would be "cruel and unusual." Between fiscally liberal naive Republicans like the Bush family and traitorous anti-American socialists and communists d/b/a Democrats wasting trillions we would be better off without government.
Shah's comments were absurd, hyperbolic, nonsense. As Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf might say, "Bovine scatology." "BS" is enough to get the point across.
These comments demonstrate to desperation and lack of credibility that Obama and his entire administration of "czars": and apparatchiks have.
You might ask yourself if the voters went insane in 2008. No, maybe not. But, it's clear that the so-called moderates (poll-tested) know very little about American civics and they knew nothing about Obama's extremist, leftist grounding.
I wonder how many US Seniors will be killed by the cuts in OBAMA-CARE. It seems to me that women know how not to get pregnant but still do. They choose poverty for their children and that is not my problem. This is an issue for CHARITY and not the US TAXPAYERS.
I wonder how many US Seniors will be killed by the cuts in OBAMA-CARE. It seems to me that women know how not to get pregnant but still do. They choose poverty for their children and that is not my problem. This is an issue for CHARITY and not the US TAXPAYERS.
"USAID's work also strengthens America's economic security. By establishing links to consumers at the bottom of the pyramid, we effectively position American countries to enter more markets and sell more goods in the economies of the future, promoting exports and creating American jobs," he said."
America is not a manufacturing country. Seems we would only be securing the future for Japan and China by these arguments.
We need to look to America first. Current policy leaves Americans in distress. Not uncomfortable, but real distress and poverty. But the Democrats encourage this. The low end of the economy is where their power base is. So the subsidize it, and encourage it. Rather than create incentives to create new jobs, they extend unemployment.
The liberal "government as provider" mentality is the big lie. Government is a cost not a generator of revenue. They can encourage higher standards of living by the actions taken, but they cannot create wealth. Private industry does that, and the liberals think of private industry as the enemy of their causes. Communism fell in the USSR only to see the socialist rise of the same corrupt ideals in the US. America can stand on it's own feet if allowed to. Then and only then should we consider foreign aid a priority on the scale the government wishes to continue. Secure our borders, protect our people. Encourage our own economy. Then when the ship of state is on an even keel consider foreign aid. We are in trouble in America. Solve domestic problems as the priority!
I guess the administration will be as accurate on this one as the number of jobs created with the stimulus. LOL But this is even more reason to cut the unnecessary support of NPR, NEA (including the Cowboy Poetry Festival) and Planned Parenthood (how many kids have they killed?)
Obama lied, Libyans died....Obama lied, American ghetto children died, Obama lied, wildlife died .....on the golf courses in DC and Hawaii from all his slicing , shanks and wild shots.
In fact, they probably have the Wildlife and Forestry people sign waivers not to leak to the press all the wildlife he's killed smoking dope on the tees and around the courses he plays to avoid real decision making time...
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