You may have heard about Obama’s Global Poverty Bill that is setting the Conservative blogging community ablaze. However, it isn’t currently receiving much coverage in the mainstream press.

If it becomes law, it would commit the president to creating and implementing a strategy to help eradicate global poverty. The number of people living on less than a dollar a day would be halved by 2015—which means we would achieve Millennium Development Goal #1.

This bill has been referred to the Senate Committee on Foreign relations. Check it out for yourself–you can read the entire bill here. (It isn’t too long).

We here at Global Development Matters hope that all of the candidates make global development a priority.

UNICEF released a report that shows our progress towards the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, which seek to unite countries’ efforts to improve education, halt the spread of AIDS, alleviate poverty, and more. We are making some advances–more than 1.2 billion people gained access to safe drinking water between 1990 and 2004, and since 2000, the use of insecticide-treated nets among children has tripled in many cases in Malaria-affected countries. However, there is much more to be done, and we are not on track to achieving many of the goals. If we are going to reach these goals by the target date of 2015, we must improve rich country policy.

Here’s a good video that gives you an overview of the Millennium Development Goals:

You can also read this article in the Guardian to learn more.