Likely Obama Defense pick pushed U.N. scheme

Former Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., President Obama’s likely nominee to head the Department of Defense, has a long history of introducing legislation aimed at massive U.S. funding for the Third World, even pushing a de facto global tax.

With Obama, Hagel co-sponsored the Global Poverty Act, which would have imposed a new “tax” on the U.S. requiring the country to add 0.7 percent of the gross national product to its overall spending on humanitarian aid.

For fiscal 2009, for example, the bill would have translated into up to $98 billion in required new aid.

The bill passed reading in the Foreign Affairs Committee in July 2008 but was never scheduled for a vote on the Senate floor.

A key section of the bill would have required the U.S. president to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goal. The U.N. project purportedly aims to reduce by one-half the proportion of people worldwide who live on less than $1 per day.

The U.N. Millennium Development Goal has demanded the imposition of international taxes as part of a stated effort of “eradicating extreme poverty, reducing child mortality rates, fighting disease epidemics such as AIDS and developing a global partnership for development.”

Investor’s Business Daily reported the Millennium goal called for a “currency transfer tax,” a “tax on the rental value of land and natural resources” and a “royalty on worldwide fossil energy projection – oil, natural gas, coal.” It also called for “fees for the commercial use of the oceans, fees for airplane use of the skies, fees for use of the electromagnetic spectrum, fees on foreign exchange transactions, and a tax on the carbon content of fuels.”

Indeed, in September 2010, a group of 60 nations, including France, Britain and Japan, proposed at the U.N. summit on the Millennium Development Goals that a tax be introduced on international currency transactions to raise funds for development aid.

WND previously reported, the Millennium Goal started off as the Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization funded heavily by billionaire activist George Soros.

The project's stated aim is to end extreme poverty and hunger. It was founded by economist Jeffrey Sachs, who is also a leader at the Soros-funded Institute for New Economic Thinking, or INET.

INET holds an annual summit in the mountains of Bretton Woods, N.H., aimed openly at remaking the world economy.

Sachs served as director of the U.N.’s Millennium Goal from 2002 to 2006.

Meanwhile, Hagel has pushed other bills seeking the transfer of massive U.S. funds for the Third World.

With then-Democratic Sen. Joe Biden, Hagel sponsored the Social Investment and Economic Development for the Americas Act of 2007.

The act sought to establish a Social Investment and Economic Development Fund for the Americas to provide assistance to “reduce poverty, expand the middle class and foster increased economic opportunity in the countries of the Western Hemisphere.”

The estimated cost of the act would have been $50 million for fiscal year 2008; $75 million for fiscal year 2009; $100 million for fiscal year 2010; $125 million for fiscal year 2011; $150 million for fiscal year 2012.

Together with Biden, Hagel in 2008 introduced S. 3169, a bill to authorize appropriations for the U.S. contribution to the eleventh replenishment of the resources of the African Development Fund.

The bill sought an annual contribution of $468 million to the African fund.

With Biden again, Hagel sponsored the International Development Association Replenishment Act of 2008. The act authorized a U.S. contribution of $3.7 billion to the development association, subject to obtaining the necessary appropriations.

With research by Brenda J. Elliott