I got this email today from ONE.org. They are working to get 60 senators in the next 6 days to support $39.8 billion for the international affairs budget -- $3.9 billion over last year's international affairs budget -- the biggest increase in recent history. The email is below.

They have made it extremely easy for you to write you Senators. You just have to visit this page, and fill out a form, and viola, you're done.

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We're close. For months you've been pushing Congress to fund the fight against poverty in 2008. And now we are days away from securing $39.8 billion - $3.9 billion over last year's international affairs budget - the largest increase in recent history.

Six senators, Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Chuck Hagel (R-NE), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Gordon Smith (R-OR), Christopher Dodd (D-CT), and Norm Coleman (R-MN), are taking the lead by writing a letter encouraging their colleagues in the Senate to support this critical funding.

Please take a minute to ask your senator to sign on to this letter.

The international affairs budget contains almost all the funding America devotes to poverty focused development assistance - the money that so directly translates into lives saved and countries transformed. It's not a band-aid for extreme poverty, it's smart aid that attacks it at its roots. By contributing our share to this type of funding, in partnership with other nations, we can put 77 million children in school and save 16,000 lives a day by combating AIDS, TB, and Malaria.

You scored an important victory in March when you convinced the Senate to agree to put $39.8 into the budget. Now they need to translate the budget into real dollars. The Senate Appropriations Committee leadership does just that. They write the check.

Write your senators urging them to allocate $39.8 billion at this critical time.

A year ago ONE members mobilized around a very similar letter and 52 Senators signed on in support. This year we're hoping to get 60 Senators to co-sign the Feinstein-Hagel-Durbin-Smith-Dodd-Coleman letter supporting the largest increase in recent history.

We have 6 Senators now, 54 to go. You can track our progress, as it happens, on the ONE Blog.

Thank you for your voice, Josh Peck, ONE.org
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Labels: activism, politics