Obama's First Inaugural Address

More than 100,000 U.S. ONE members signed our petition to Barack Obama, asking him to make a strong statement about global poverty in his inaugural address. And he did exactly that, saying:

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

The White House website, whitehouse.gov, went even further. Under "Foreign Policy," it reads:

Fight Global Poverty: Obama and Biden will embrace the Millennium Development Goal of cutting extreme poverty and hunger around the world in half by 2015, and they will double our foreign assistance to achieve that goal. This will help the world's weakest states build healthy and educated communities, reduce poverty, develop markets, and generate wealth.

President Obama's statement set a standard for the new Administration's policies to come, and sent a strong message of hope to those suffering in the world's poorest places.

But although Obama came through for us -- and for the 1.4 billion people globally who are living in extreme poverty, earning less than $1.25 a day -- in his inaugural address, we must keep encouraging him to follow through. The blueprint of his first budget request to Congress, released in late February, includes $51.7 billion designated for the State Department and other International Affairs Programs. This number represents a $4.5 billion increase over the $47.2 billion that is slated for fiscal year 2009, but we do not yet know how much of it will represent an increase for global poverty reduction programs.

ONE is seeking a $4 billion increase for poverty reduction accounts as a positive start to enabling President Obama to fulfill his historic anti-poverty commitments, as pledged in his inaugural address. In the next couple weeks, ONE will work to make sure that these commitments and sentiments are fully reflected in the nuts and bolts of the President's budget request, which we'll learn more about in April.