Saturday 20 August 2011

The Obama administration wastes over $2 billion on climate change aid

The US federal government recently avoided going broke by the decision to raise the debt ceiling. But that does not the least deter the Obama administration from wasting taxpayers´s money on (bogus) climate change projects abroad. Nobody seems to know the entire amount of money spent on global warming projects in other countries, but according to this information by foreignassistance.gov, only the Department of State and USAID core climate assistance this year will be almost two billion USD.

Climate change is one of the century's greatest challenges, and will be a priority of our diplomacy and development work for years to come. USG funding to combat global climate change will help the most vulnerable countries respond to the growing impacts of climate change, hasten the world's transition to a low-carbon economy, and help forge a global solution to the climate crisis. 

The U.S. government's international climate change financing in FY 2010 was a total of $1.7 billion, consisting of $1.3 billion of Congressionally appropriated assistance and $400 million of development finance and export credit. The U.S. government's FY 2011 budget request included $1.9 billion in assistance and additional support from development finance and export credit. Core funding to the Global Climate Change Initiative through USAID, the Department of the Treasury, and the Department of State increased from $316 million in FY 2009 to approximately $1 billion in FY 2010. The FY 2012 core funding request to Congress of $1.3 billion is slightly less than the FY 2011 core request of $1.4 billion. Other government programs, including development finance and export credits also contribute to the climate change effort.
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Please Note: The numbers below do not cover all of the U.S. government's international climate change financing, but only the Department of State and USAID core climate assistance.

Read the entire article here

Contrast the above with this sad reality:

The national debt broke the $1 trillion mark for the first time in 1982. It topped $2 trillion in 1986, $3 trillion in 1990, $5 trillion in 1996, $6 trillion in 2002 and $10 trillion in 2008. The current US debt is $14.46 trillion, or about $44,000 for every person in the United States.
Government spending over the next five years is expected to exceed tax revenues by about $1 trillion per year. The interest alone on the national debt accounts for nearly 1 out of every 5 dollars collected in taxes.
This clearly isn’t a problem that developed overnight. For decades, Americans have simply become used to living on borrowed money.
The debt ratio — expressed as the percentage of the total outstanding debt compared to the gross domestic product of the U.S. — was under 40 percent during the economic malaise of the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations. The debt ratio increased to over 60 percent under Reagan, dropped to under 60 percent during the Clinton administration, then it rose to over 80 percent under George W. Bush. Under Obama, the debt ratio has risen to over 98 percent of GDP.

Read the entire article here

PS
Clearly the US government cannot continue to increase the debt in the years to come. There must be real budget cuts in order to avoid bankruptcy. Cutting the wasteful "climate change aid" should be on the top of the cut list.

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