Call to Action: U.S. Cutting Food Aid Aimed at Self-SufficiencyTrue Majority
It is disheartening at this time when the spirit of the holiday season is in the air that we open the newspaper to find: "U.S. Cutting Food Aid Aimed at Self-Sufficiency."
While the number of the world's people who go hungry is rising for the first time in years, the Bush administration can find no better way to reduce spending than to cut $600 million from global food aid programs aimed at helping millions of people climb out of poverty.
That belt-tightening of $600 million doesn't make much of a dent in a federal discretionary budget of $965 BILLION (it's 0.0001 percent), but in the developing world, it's emergency food to prevent the starvation of millions, and long-term agricultural development to help people feed even more people themselves.
Or put another way, it's 1/60th of the $35 BILLION that remains in the budget to maintain America's Cold War nuclear weapons equivalent to 150,000 of the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima.
This is so outrageous that there's now a BIPARTISAN effort in Congress led by Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Missouri) to convince the administration that global food aid should not be cut.
Let's make our voices really count this holiday season and give the most important gift we can, the gift of life for millions of our hungry brothers and sisters around the world.
And we can make it happen. Flood your members of Congress with faxes. Click here to send a message. Be sure to select the "fax" button, as sending a fax always gets through to members of Congress. Emails are too often deleted. This is a free service. No fax machine required.
