Why are Republicans in Congress trying to help Barack Obama?

Republicans allowed a bill that carries his name, among nine others, to pass the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by voice vote last week - without any hearings. That means there was no roll-call vote so no member can be held accountable. The same bill passed the House by voice vote last year.

The Obama bill passed out of committee with the cooperation of the co-sponsor, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind. A Rhodes scholar like former President Bill Clinton, Lugar has never seen a United Nations enhancement he didn't like.

Obama's costly, dangerous and altogether bad bill (S. 2433), which could come up in the Senate any day, is called the Global Poverty Act. It would commit U.S. taxpayers to spend 0.7 percent of our Gross Domestic Product on foreign handouts, which is at least $30 billion over and above the exorbitant and wasted sums we already give away overseas.

The bipartisan bill would require the president "to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to further the United States foreign policy objective of promoting the reduction of global poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty, and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people worldwide, between 1990 and 2015, who live on less than $1 per day."

The bill's other co-sponsors include Sens. Joseph Biden, D-Del., Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., Chris Dodd, D-Conn., Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Russ Feingold, D-Wis., Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., Charles Hagel, R-Neb., and Robert Mendez, D-N.J.

We should be on guard any time politicians use the word "comprehensive," an umbrella word that always shades a lot of mischief. The notion that U.S. taxpayers should or could cut in half the number of people worldwide who live in poverty by 2015 is ridiculous.

The scariest phrase in the bill is "Millennium Development Goal." That refers to the declaration adopted by the United Nations Millennium Assembly and Summit in 2000 (blessed by President Bill Clinton) which called for the "eradication of poverty" by "redistribution (of) wealth and land," cancellation of "the debts of developing countries," and "a fair distribution of the earth's resources" (from the United States to the rest of the world, of course).

The Millennium project is monitored by Jeffrey D. Sachs, a Columbia University economist. In 2005 he presented then-U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan with a 3,000-page report based on the research of 265 so-called poverty specialists.

Sachs' document criticized the United States for giving only $16.3 billion a year in global anti-poverty aid. He argued that we should spend an additional $30 billion a year in order to reach the 0.7 percent target that the U.N. set for the United Sates in 2000. Continued...