Calling Senator Dirksen................

A number of years ago, Senator Everett Dirksen commented on the defense budget by saying "a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you're talking about real money!" What would he say today about the defense department budget that funds our military and private contractors in the war on terror? Little George is requesting a few more billion to fight the war.....48 to be exact. We're spending at the rate of Ten Billion Dollars per month. A couple of weeks ago in Sunday School we were talking about being rich and the obligation that carries. God has abundantly blessed America and we have an obligation to do something with those riches. More than 2.6 billion people - over 40 per cent of the world's population - do not have access to basic sanitation, and more than one billion people still use unsafe sources of drinking water, warns a report released by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF. Around the world millions of children are being born into a silent emergency of simple needs,” says Carol Bellamy, UNICEF’s Executive Director. “The growing disparity between the haves and the have-nots in terms of access to basic services is killing around 4000 children every day and underlies many more of the 10 million child deaths each year. We have to act now to close this gap or the death toll will certainly rise." "Water and sanitation are among the most important determinants of public health. Wherever people achieve reliable access to safe drinking-water and adequate sanitation they have won a major battle against a wide range of diseases," says WHO Director-General Dr LEE Jong-wook. The consequences of inaction today are severe, according to WHO and UNICEF. Diarrhoeal disease currently takes the lives of 1.8 million people each year – most of them children under five - with millions more left permanently debilitated.
I recently learned that estimates are that Twenty billion dollars would provide every man, woman and child in the world with clean drinking water and basic sanitation. I haven't counted recently but that a lot of people. Two months funding a war......something to think about. Maybe when this war is over we'll be motivated to do something good with our money.