Obama’s Global Poverty Tax-Truth! & Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
An eRumor that warns readers that Senator Obama sponsored a Global Poverty Tax Bill, SB2433, where not only 850 Billion dollars from American Taxpayers would be sent to the poor in other countries but there is a provision from the United Nations that would ban small and light weapons in all nations, thus violating the American Second Amendment rights.
The Truth:
SB-2433 is called the “Global Poverty Act of 2007.” It was sponsored by Illinois Senator Barack Obama.
The bill doesn’t define the costs or funding of the act.
Most of the analysis of the act in this eRumor is based on conservative writer Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media.
He focuses his analysis on the part of the act that says that the president of the United States should “develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to further the United States foreign police objective” of several things such as promoting and reducing global poverty and the elimination of extreme global poverty. But it also says that the president should work for 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.”
Kincaid says that the “Millennium Development Goal” is defined in the United Nations Millennium Declaration passed by the U.N. General Assembly in 2000. He quotes a Millennium Project official as saying that the U.S. would be forced to pay 0.7 percent of Gross National Product in increased foreign aid spending. That would be $65 billion a year over what the U.S. currently spends in foreign aid and over a 13-year period from 2002 to 2015 when the U.S. is expected to reach the Millennium Development Goals. That adds up to $845 billion.
In addition, the Millennium Development Goals include banning “small arms and light weapons” in all nations involved in the project.
The bill was considered by a Senate committee and introduced to the Senate in December of 2007 and on April 24, 2008 it was placed on Senate Legislative Calendar under General Orders.
CLICK for Govtrack report and progress of SB2433
updated 09/29/08