Posted on 06/20/2002 5:29:42 PM PDT by niki
Bush to Propose Another $100 Million Over Five Years for Education in Africa
By Jennifer Loven Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Ahead of a summit of industrialized nations intended to focus on the plight of sub-Saharan Africa, President Bush says America should spend $20 million more a year on education there and will visit the continent next year.
Though the proposed spending boost would double the government's investment on an education initiative in Africa, the $200 million total was deemed modest by critics.
The World Bank has estimated that wealthy donor countries will need to commit between $3 billion and $4 billion annually in additional foreign aid over the next 10 years to achieve the goal of universal primary education in the developing world by the year 2015. Estimates of the number of children in poor nations who have never attended school range as high as 125 million, about two-thirds of them girls.
Gene Sperling, former President Clinton's chief White House economic adviser and now head of the Center for Universal Education at the Council on Foreign Relations, said 75 million of the children out of school worldwide are in Africa.
"The Bush announcement proposes spending $20 million more each year for education in all of Africa, which is the cost of building just one large high school in the United States," Sperling said. "This proposal is very disappointing."
A bipartisan group of congressmen urged Bush, in a letter sent Thursday, to raise U.S. spending on basic education around the world to $1 billion by 2006.
The president planned to announce his travel plans and the new spending initiative Thursday night at a dinner in memory of the Rev. Leon Sullivan, a Philadelphia minister credited with helping end apartheid in South Africa, White House officials said.
On Wednesday, the president promised an extra $500 million over three years to help prevent mothers in parts of African and the Caribbean from transmitting the AIDS virus to their children.
Africa will be a major focus of the Group of Eight meeting that Bush attends next week in Canada.
The White House hopes the new African initiative will ease criticism about U.S. spending on developing nations and projecting a compassionate image of Bush to both foreign leaders and American voters. The $10 billion U.S. foreign aid budget is the lowest among rich nations as a percentage of economic output.
Rock star Bono and Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill toured Africa last month after the singer persuaded the U.S. official to see for himself the importance of debt relief, fair trade and effective aid. O'Neill says the United States is committed to helping Africa, but that aid money should produce measurable results.
The proposed new spending will train more than 420,000 new teachers in Africa, provide more than 250,000 scholarships for girls, and, with help from historically black colleges in America, provide 4 1/2 million more textbooks for children in Africa, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said.
The president's trip to Africa next year will focus on the benefits of a law that reduces trade barriers to African nations that have market-based economies and policies on reducing poverty, fighting corruption, protecting workers' rights and fostering human rights, Fleischer said.
Who are you?
Or to be more succinct....where do YOU stand? Seems like you are asking all the questions like this is some focus group.
What is YOUR bottom line?
Mind you, I'm not attempting to insult, but my curiosity is aroused.
The point being: If a person accepts aid to Israel as constitutional, but rejects aid to Africa as unconstitutional, then that person is being dishonest.
I won't speculate as to why. But I can assure you that no one ever suggested that Reagans increases in spending on foreign aid were unconstitutional.
I've got an even better idea! Quit trying to support the world with OUR money and let us keep it!!! We can take care of educating our own children with no help from the nanny-state just fine and dandy!!
I believe so. I expected some Bots to show up in the first dozen or so if they were going to show. I think now they are finally seeing his true colors.
Unfortunately that's too easy and doesn't get him liberal voters.
Short term - buy votes for the elections this fall. Long term, $100 million of our money goes to warlords, thugs, and people who will end up hating us or ignoring us.
It's time to change the oil in Washington.
Is foreign aid to Africa bad, while aid to Israel OK?
It isn't. This is a primary reason we are in an undeclared, undefined war against an undefined enemy.
Isreal has some of the smartest people on the planet as its citizens. Perhaps they can go it alone.
I wish our esteemed President and every other high-ranking Government type would stay away from these idiotic "conferences". Every time "we" attend one, it winds up costing us untold millions for jack squat.
That is a very easy statement to make in a chatroom. I'm sure that those in a position of actually setting policy would find it much more difficult.
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