(1) Poverty, hunger, lack of opportunity, gender inequality, and environmental degradation are recognized as significant contributors to--
(A) socioeconomic and political instability; and
(B) the exacerbation of disease pandemic and other global health threats.
(2) The 2006 National Security Strategy of the United States notes, ‘America’s national interests and moral values drive us in the same direction: to assist the world’s poor citizens and least developed nations and help integrate them into the global economy.’.
(3) The bipartisan Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9/11 Commission Report) recommends, ‘A comprehensive United States strategy to counter terrorism should include economic policies that encourage development, more open societies, and opportunities for people to improve the lives of their families and enhance prospects for their children.’.
(4) The alleviation of poverty and hunger is in the national interest of the United States. It improves United States security by mitigating the underlying causes of violence and extremism, addresses threats like climate change and pandemic disease, expands economic opportunities for producers and consumers in the United States, demonstrates United States leadership to the world, and represents the values, humanitarianism, and generosity of the American people.
(5) Elevating the standing of the United States in the world represents a critical and essential element for any strategy to improve national and global security by mitigating the root causes of conflict and multinational terrorism, strengthening diplomatic and economic relationships, preventing global climate change, curbing weapons proliferation, and fostering peace and cooperation between all nations.
(6) Currently the global development policies and programs of the United States Government are scattered across 12 different Federal departments, 25 different Federal agencies, and nearly 60 Federal Government offices. The current law governing foreign assistance is outdated, cumbersome, and lacks relevance for modern challenges, articulating at least 140 broad priorities for United States development efforts, with at least 400 specific directives on how to implement those broad priorities. Moreover, it allows the budget process to drive priorities, rather than setting clear priorities that drive resource decisions.
(7) The international and domestic challenges of the 21st century--including transnational threats such as economic instability, terrorism, climate change, and disease--cannot be met with a foreign assistance apparatus that was created to confront the challenges of the 20th century. The cornerstone for a new foreign assistance architecture begins with reform of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 that ensures a rationalized organizational structure for a strengthened development agency, a concise set of development priorities, rebuilt human resource capacity, strengthened monitoring and evaluation, reinvigorated policy and intellectual expertise, with sufficient resources and commensurate accountability to achieve key foreign assistance goals.
(8) President Barack Obama has expressed a commitment to cut extreme poverty and hunger around the world in half, and to increase the level of United States foreign assistance to meet that goal.