UPDATE: On May 23rd, the House Appropriations Committee released a draft of FY 2012 Agriculture Appropriations bill funding levels, which implements a 39% cut to PL 480 Title II—from the requested $1.69 billion to $1.04 billion, dropping it below its 2008 amount. You can read more about the bill here and contact your congressional representative and senator here to express your concern.

As of November 2010, polls show that Americans believe we spend 27% of the federal budget on foreign aid, and would like to have the US spend 13% instead. In fact:

• Less than 1% of the federal budget goes to humanitarian and development assistance.
• Cuts in foreign programs would deny 18 million vulnerable people life-saving help.
• Cutting these programs will have no measurable impact on the federal deficit.
• Cutting these programs hurts the US’s ability to help stabilize countries and regions and also hurts those countries’ ability to become good trading partners and markets for our products.

Image via humanosphere.kplu.org

Save a life: Write a letter to your congressional representative and senator and ask them not to cut humanitarian and development assistance programs.