We should give money to Africa

I would like to conclude by reiterating by the stances I constructed earlier, but first I will respond to some of the claims you have made. For instance, you seem to think that I and "many other politicians" believe we will fall into a recession by doing this. Please note I never made this claim. I justified my point of view on a completely different basis. Whether we have the money to do this is a completely different topic of debate, and not one I chose to bring up initially. I will not address this; I would like to keep the debate within the focus of the arguments I initially made. I will not disagree that we waste a lot of money, but this fact is certainly not a justification for spending more on Africa. The first argument I would like to rehash is the idea that this is not the United States' responsibility, the only real argument my opponent addressed in her last response. All of the organizations she listed are certainly private organizations that have spent extensive time and money helping impoverished Africans. However, the argument she concedes is that the reason they are failing in Africa is not a lack of funds. Look at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - obviously, money is not the issue. Rather, the real issue is infrastructure. In order to create a sustainable environment for raising the overall African standard of living, we need to create a long-term effort with the goal of improving gradually. This means that no matter how much money we throw Africa's way, we can only do so much. Setting aside more money to help private organizations is one thing; but there is no effective way for the U.S. to measure any progress on its own behalf in Africa without having some physical effort involved. Finally, even if the private organizations could help, they, too, need much more than money. They need dedicated volunteers so that they can help in building an infrastructure in Africa for distributing supplies, and money cannot buy that. Second, my opponent has still not justified why it is the United States' job to get involved in Africa. All she says is that, basically, "we're doing it now." This is not a response. The simple fact remains that any international action needs to be justified; we ought not go into other countries without being able to support our opinion externally, and more important, internally. For this reason, your plan would fail on two levels; first, the international community recognizes that this is something not just any one country can deal with, much less should try to; only the United Nations is designed, at least in part, with these types of operations in mind. The African Union, as I mentioned earlier, would be a huge help; either way, unilateral action is not warranted in any way. To conclude this debate, I will bring up the remaining point I made earlier. My opponent has never explained why we should attempt to solve Africa's problems before our own. As I explained, I do not advocate that this means we have to necessarily stop funding international efforts. However, we do need to deal with our problems first. My opponent seems to claim that Africa's problems are more important to us than our own, when clearly they should not be. I will not deny that a sizable portion of the U.S. budget is spent in excess instead of helping important things like fighting poverty; however, as mentioned above, this is no excuse for spending even more money on others. With 12% of our nation below the poverty line, how we can possibly justify spending money on Africans and not on ourselves? My opponent has conceded the fact that it is the primary role of any government to protect its citizens. It is unfortunate that the African continent has seen these circumstances, but is it our fault? Have we done anything that would make us obligated to spend money on Africans? Again, I do not say that we should not, but only that we have no obligation, and that what's more important is helping our own citizens first. If 12% of our country, the wealthiest in the world, is impoverished, are we really even going to be able to help Africa that much? As you can see, while my opponent has some strong rhetoric in her favor about why Africa has major problems, she clearly never justifies why United States action is warranted, and why just giving money to Africa will be a solution.