Bring the Foreign Assistance Act into the 21st Century

Dear Candidate for U.S. President,

As a candidate to become the next president of the United States, you are no doubt preparing to tackle many of the issues on voters' minds - the economy, health care, affordable education, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But a concern related to all of these things will be at the forefront of my mind when I cast my vote on November 4th: your vision for a better, safer America and world.

I'm concerned that the most visible part of our foreign policy today - how we relate to the governments, people and trends around the world - is our military strength, and not other aspects of American innovation, generosity and values. Our foreign assistance programs show another way the U.S. engages the rest of the world. They've helped virtually eradicate diseases such as smallpox and river blindness, put more children in school around the world, and reduced the number of people living worldwide on less than a dollar a day by more than 400 million.

But our foreign assistance policy was written in 1961. A lot has changed since then. And just as the military constantly upgrades and refines its technology and tactics to better protect the U.S. and our interests, we need a new foreign assistance policy that helps us do more and better to address today's challenges - poverty, infectious disease, instability and global warming. Because what happens in other parts of the world now directly affects our security, our jobs, our health, and our way of life. We need a modern Foreign Assistance Act to help improve our image in the rest of the world, expand economic opportunities, and make us safer and more prosperous at home.

If elected president in the 2008 national election, please make it your priority to bring the Foreign Assistance Act into the 21st century.