The United States Federal Government should Significantly Reform its Policy Towards Russia

Orphans and homelessness: Ok it is sad that Russia has so many homeless orphans. But, the United States has more. In the United States there were 1.5 million homeless children in the United States. This is more than double the number that you presented. It is imperative that the United States help those who need help in our country rather than other countries. Remember as you stated, the Government has a responsibility to protect the United States, but, from foreign and domestic threats. Homelessness is one of these domestic threats. (4) HIV and AIDS: With your numbers there are about 1.4 million people in Russia that have HIV/AIDS. You have also stated that much of the HIV/AIDS has come from drug injection. A person infected uses a needle then another person uses the same needle and is infected by HIV/AIDs. So what you are proposing is to end education into drug prevention. This will mean the number of people infected with HIV/AIDS will increase. With these numbers officials know they can not completely end drug addiction, even with education about what drugs do, so they have programs to give clean needles to drug addicts in an attempt to slow the passage of HIV to other people who do not have the disease. Foreign Aid being cut: The United States needs to get the economy "back on track" and hopefully begin to eliminate the budget deficit to do this the United States needs money. One place to get money is from the foreign aid budget. Now onto your plan: First of all, his plan would cut, if I am correct, the funding to Ethanol Fuel program. But, what reason for the Ethanol Program seeing as it has advantages such as it is a renewable fuel. Using ethanol as a motor fuel reduces greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 46%. Using just 10% ethanol in your gas tank reduces greenhouse gas emissions by up to 19%. Ethanol does not pollute ground water, because of it's chemical structure ethanol phase separates when coming in contact with ground water. Also, Ethanol is cheaper. It costs only 75 cents a gallon to refine Ethanol fuel. Meanwhile it can cost up to $1.60 to refine oil. Ethanol supports local farmers as well, for obvious reasons. Ethanol is easy to switch to, it is relatively easy to use today's technologies to blend ethanol into gasoline from E10 to E85 even. Also, other countries such as Brazil, who do not have the resources the United States have, had tremendous success with Ethanol fuel. (1) Now onto your plan. Giving a billion dollars a year to Russia is not a good idea. First of all, Russia is an extremely corrupt country the 15th annual Transparency International report on corruption perceptions around the world, ranking nations from least to most corrupt. Russia slid from 146th place to 154th, out of 178 countries. Russia is also the most corrupt of the G-20 nations. Nearly 80% of Russians believe that corruption is a major problem and 71% believe the Russian Governments promises to end corruption is nothing more than "window dressing". It was calculated that in 2005 corruption amounted to 316 billion dollars and this number has only grown since then. This means that putting more money into Russia will only be adding to the corrupt bureaucracy the Russian government is. People who have tried to expose this corruption have been subject to assault and in some cases murder. The government has not been efficient in prosecuting these cases showing they do not want to end corruption. This means that putting more money into a place that is corrupt will not help matters. (3,5) Now to you advantages 1. Humanization: The United States needs to help its own people before it reaches out to people of other countries. How is the United States government being responsible when it helps foreign countries before its own. 2. HIV/AIDS combated To combat HIV and AIDs you need to get rid of the root causes, one of the root causes is drugs. The Russians already educate about drugs therefore, why should more money be put in this program. 3. National Security There is no evidence which says that not increasing the foreign funding to Russia will make the United States unsafe. Congress has to keep the United States safe from foreign and domestic threats Russia is not a foreign threat, in todays world. They do not want to attack the United States. But, there are many domestic problems that need to be solved before going over seas and solving other problems. Thank you. Sources: 1. . http://www.biodieselinvesting.com... 2. . http://web.worldbank.org... 3. . http://www.washingtonpost.com... 4. . http://cflhomeless.wordpress.com... 5. . http://www.reuters.com...