CRS Urge U.S. House to Keep in Mind the World’s Poorest as Subcommittee Marks Up Foreign OPS Appropriations for FY2012WASHINGTON—Morally appropriate efforts must be made to reduce the nation’s deficit and debt but special care must be taken that the cuts don’t disproportionally affect the world’s poorest people, said Bishop Howard J. Hubbard of Albany, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ USCCB Committee on International Justice and Peace, and Ken Hackett, president of Catholic Relief Services, in a July 5 letter to the Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs as it prepares to mark up the Foreign Operations Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2012.

In the letter, Bishop Hubbard and Hackett note that the enacted FY 2011 Foreign Affairs budget already cut these life-saving programs by an average of 8.4% from FY 2010 and affirm that “further cuts would be disproportionate and life-threatening to the world’s poorest people”.At stake are a wide range of life-saving and dignity preserving activities such as agricultural assistance to poor farmers; medicines for people living with HIV/AIDS and vaccines for preventable diseases; assistance to orphans and vulnerable children; humanitarian assistance in cases of famine; emergency health care, shelter, and reconstruction in disaster-devastated places like Haiti; peacekeepers to protect innocent civilians in troubled nations such as Sudan and the Congo; and life-sustaining support to migrants and refugees fleeing conflict or persecution in nations like Iraq.

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via USCCB – Office of Media Relations USCCB, CRS Urge U.S. House to Keep in Mind the Worlds’ Poorest as Subcommittee Marks Up Foreign OPS Appropriations for FY2012.