September 25, 2008 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Amid presidential election drama and the negotiations for a bailout of the U.S. financial system, both Barack Obama and John McCain took time today to speak to participants of the Clinton Global Initiative.
While the senators discussed the $700-billion federal plan to curb the financial crisis, they also made broad commitments to fight climate change, end deadly diseases, and eradicate global poverty.
Mr. McCain, a Republican from Arizona, said he would improve how the federal government provides assistance abroad. “We should and must reform our aid programs to make sure they are serving the interest of people in need, and not just serving special interests in Washington,” he said.
In the White House, he said, he would build upon the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other nonprofit groups to eliminate malaria, prevent tuberculosis, and improve maternal and child health.
“Promoting development, creating opportunities, and eliminating disease do not only serve our national interests; they also accord with our deepest American values,” he said.
After his speech, Bill Clinton thanked Mr. McCain’s wife, Cindy, for her charitable work in Rwanda.
Mr. Obama, a Democrat from Illinois, spoke via satellite and proposed a government partnership with businesses and nonprofit groups to create jobs by supporting small and mid-sized companies in developing countries. Its first project would be to invest in efforts to produce and distribute bed nets to prevent the spread of malaria, he said.
He also pledged a $2-billion government program to provide primary education to girls and boys around the world, an effort originally proposed by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“There is suffering across the globe that doesn’t need to be tolerated in the 21st century,” he said. “And it leads to pockets of instability that provide fertile breeding grounds for threats like terror and the smuggling of deadly weapons that cannot be contained by the drawing of a border or the distance of an ocean.”
