Obama Laments Debt, But Promises Billions for Anti-Poverty Program

By Bill Sammon Barack Obama, who lamented Friday that “we have not managed our federal budget with any kind of discipline,” is nonetheless promising to spend $50 billion on a United Nations anti-poverty program that critics say will drive up American debt. “The short-term weakness in the capital market is a reflection of long-term problems that we have in our economy,” Obama told reporters in Florida. “We have been loading up enormous amounts of debt.” Yet Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, have pledged tens of billions in new spending on a U.N. program that promises cash to poor countries. The program is one of eight sweeping “Millennium Development Goals” the U.N. adopted in 2000. “Obama and Biden will embrace the Millennium Development Goal of cutting extreme poverty around the world in half by 2015, and they will double our foreign assistance to $50 billion to achieve that goal,” the candidates vow in their campaign ... (link)