Us_Shouldn't_Increase_Aids_Funding_Towards_Africa

Money does not grow on trees. It’s a simple fact of life that we have grown up hearing from everyone over the age of 30. The same can be said for the United States. We do not have an infinite supply of cash that we can spend at our free will- that included Africa. I will discuss three main points of analysis: Trillions of dollars have been pumped into Africa globally with no return, the United States is already giving a large sum to Africa, and the US cannot afford to increase funding. Back to my first point of analysis, trillions of dollars have been pumped into Africa globally. According to Nina Brenjo of alertnet.org in 2007: “The rich world has spent $2.3 trillion over 50 years on aid to the worlds’ poorest countries, yet the poverty grinds on relentlessly.” For half of a century, the United States and other leading countries have given trillions of dollars to Africa. However, as I stand here, we are deciding weather we should contribute even more to the still suffering country. Even after 50 years of aid, Africa is still a third world country with extremely poor conditions, poor government, and poor health care. How can we expect to see any change with the additional amount of money this resolution suggests we should give' The answer is we can’t and we won’t. We must look to the past to see our future, and that future is the same as it has always been. More money won’t solve the problems in Africa; we must rely on other methods to help Africa. My second point of analysis is that there is already a large supply of Africa in the form of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. According to Michael Fletcher in the article “Bush has quietly tripled aid to Africa” from washingtonpost.com: PEPFAR is a $15 billion plan implemented by President Bush and is the largest global health initiative. In addition, since his appointment to office, Bush has tripled the amount of AID the United States is giving to Africa. There is no need to further increase the amount of aid because there is already billions of dollars going to them. My third and final point of analysis is that the United States cannot afford to increase funding. According to the National Debt Clock at Brillig.com the total debt is over 10 trillion dollars. Any addition funding being taken from us and given to Africa would break us even further. There are other issues that need our money: things such as the war in Iraq, education, and helping the economy. We need to concentrate the small amount of funds that we do have on things that benefit us and benefit others. Africa is already well aided, and from the standings of our over 10 trillion dollars in debt, it is clear that we cannot afford to aid them further. Africa is a country that is in poor shape right now and probably will be in poor shape in the future. There is no doubt that Africa needs our help, but not in the way this resolution states. We should be exploring other ways to assist Africain a way that actually helps them and is reasonable for the United States. Africa doesn’t get help from the money that we are giving them already and so increasing the funding is bad for us and bad for them.