On Friday, we sent around a petition to the Senate asking them not to slash 4 billion dollars from the international affairs budget. Over the weekend we managed to gather over 54,000 signatures, but if we hope to convince our senators that we can’t roll back the amount we give to the fight against poverty, we’re going to need many more senators to sign on.
Right now, the Senate is considering a $4 billion cut from the president’s 2009 request for poverty-fighting funding. Most devastating – if passed, this cut would be a $1 billion drop from 2008 levels.
Thankfully, Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Gordon Smith (R-OR) have introduced an amendment to restore $2.6 billion to the international affairs budget.
This is where ONE comes in.
We only have a week to get the majority of the Senate to decide to support this amendment – so we’re doing what we do best – launching a petition!
We’re hoping to get 60 U.S. senators to sign up in support of Senator Durbin and Smith’s amendment – which means we need support from senators in every state in America.
I’ll updates you with how many ONE members have signed the petition, and how many senators have signed on, throughout the week. Please add your name and send the petition on to your friends. We only have 7 days to save billions of dollars worth of critical poverty-fighting programs for the most vulnerable among us.
3/10/08 UPDATE: The Amendment is now called the Feinstein-Smith Amendment. Senators Durbin, Sununu, Dodd and Coleman are co-sponsors for the Dear Colleague Letter.
Just a heads up that tomorrow the Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations will be analyzing President Bush’s Fiscal Year 2009 budget request and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC).
Check back to our Feb 4 post for intel on president’s 2009 budget request.
Gov. Romney held a town hall meeting in Nashua to finish up Labor Day campaigning in the Granite State. A group of ONE members, including Keith Spano, Elizabeth Laws, and ONE’s Marine Michael, all decked out in ONE Vote ’08 shirts, attended to make sure that the bottom billion people in the world were represented.
Although we did not get a chance to ask a questions, we made sure that the crowd was well aware of the ONE Campaign by passing out ONE bands and ONE Vote ’08 literature. Many of the Romney staffers are very supportive of the ONE Campaign and wore their white ONE bands throughout the event.
After Gov. Romney’s speech, we all made our way to the Governor to thank him for talking about the need to reach out to Africa through medical diplomacy and technology. We thanked him for his ideas and he told us that it was good to see us again.
Michael was able to give a ONE band to Ann Romney which she immediately put on, having seen them many times before all across the nation.
It was a long day for many ONE members seeing Sen. Dodd, Sen. Obama, and Gov. Romney at many different settings. But rarely do you get to speak with so many of our nation’s leaders, and potentially the next president of the United States, and we were going to make sure that they heard from the ONE Campaign!
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