Bill Gates issued an appeal to policymakers to support foreign aid that tackles public health and poverty challenges in the developing world. Gates, writing in the the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s annual letter today, highlighted the importance of foreign aid in global development and raising living standards in the world’s poorest countries.

The letter acknowledged that the global economic and political climate puts foreign aid expenditures under pressure, but warned that a cut in these funds could have severe implications for populations struggling to pull themselves out of poverty:

The world faces a clear choice. If we invest relatively modest amounts, many more poor farmers will be able to feed their families. If we don’t, one in seven people will continue living needlessly on the edge of starvation. My annual letter this year is an argument for making the choice to keep on helping extremely poor people build self-sufficiency.

Gates argues that investment in poor farmers can “increase their productivity so they can feed themselves and their families,” and “contribute to global food security.” The past fifty years has marked dramatic improvements in poverty reduction — global poverty levels have dropped from 40 percent to 15 percent — but Gates is concerned that the historic improvements could slow if funding for irrigation and agricultural research dry up:

We can be more innovative about delivering solutions that already exist to the farmers who need them. Knowledge about managing soil and tools like drip irrigation can help poor farmers grow more food today. We can also discover new approaches and create new tools to fundamentally transform farmers’ lives. But we won’t advance if we don’t continue to fund agricultural innovation, and I am very worried about where those funds will come from in the current economic and political climate.

The Gates Foundation — which has committed more than $25 billion [PDF] in grants since its inception in 1994 — has been an outspoken supporter of government funding of global public health and poverty reduction programs. Gates’s letter emphasized that development assistance programs “has a significant impact on people’s lives” and “modest investments in the poorest make a huge difference.”

COLUMBIA, South Carolina — One of Newt Gingrich’s most prominent supporters in Congress, Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), took sides in the Huckabee-led debate over foreign aid, and it wasn’t with the former House speaker.

Mike Huckabee spoke at a South Carolina luncheon yesterday and slammed Republicans’ calls to eliminate foreign aid, calling such a prospect “outrightly foolish” and “un-Christian.” Gingrich, who supports zeroing out foreign aid, spoke immediately following Huckabee, but did not address the former Arkansas governor’s criticisms.

Following the event, ThinkProgress spoke with Franks, who had listened to both speeches. The Arizona congressman said Huckabee’s message was “magnificent” and “right on.” When ThinkProgress noted that Gingrich was one of the Republicans who Huckabee targeted for wanting to eliminate foreign aid, Franks was reluctant to criticize his candidate of choice, saying simply, “I’m going to leave that right there”:

FRANKS: Scott, Mr. Huckabee articulates subjects like that in a way all of us wish we could. I thought he was magnificent. I’m considered one of the most conservative members of Congress and I don’t think I could have articulated my own perspective any better than that. He’s right on. I just think he’s right.

KEYES: Do you think that the Republican Party has kind of lost its way on the issue of foreign aid?

FRANKS: I think that they have to make the distinction between places where our engagement can further the cause of freedom and places where it furthers the cause of surrender. There is a difference, there is a distinction. [...]

KEYES: I was just curious to get your reaction because Speaker Gingrich is one of the folks who have called for zeroing out foreign aid which Huckabee was very critical of.

FRANKS: I’m going to leave that right there.

Listen to it:

Foreign aid accounts for less than 1 percent of the federal budget, yet Republicans have regularly demagogued the issue when discussing how to eliminate the budget deficit. Gingrich is one of the worst offenders, declaring in a recent South Carolina debate that all current recipients of American aid “ought to start off at zero and say, explain to me why I should give you a penny.”

COLUMBIA, South Carolina — Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) ripped the Republican Party during a South Carolina speech today, saying he doesn’t want to be associated with a party that would zero-out foreign aid and calling such a move “un-Christian.”

Speaking at a U.S. Global Leadership Coalition luncheon in Columbia, Huckabee told the largely-Republican crowd that their party had lost its way on the issue of foreign aid. In debate after debate, Republican presidential candidates have competed to determine which of them could be the most critical of American foreign aid funding. When the candidates gathered in South Carolina last fall, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and Mitt Romney all proposed zeroing out foreign aid funding. “You ought to start off at zero and say, explain to me why I should give you a penny,” Gingrich said.

Huckabee, who was tasked with introducing Gingrich at the event, addressed the Republican Party’s dismissal of foreign aid, calling the notion “outrightly foolish” and “extraordinarily disagreeable.” The former Arkansas governor, also an ordained Baptist preacher, went on to say that not taking action to help those living in poverty around the world “would be un-Christian.”

HUCKABEE: I resent the idea that the conservative viewpoint somehow is at odds with the idea of strategic investment in countries around the globe. I not only disagree with it, I find it extraordinarily disagreeable. [...] To be honest with you, you go to a lot of political rallies, you can get an applause that will raise the roof if you just say, “we’re going to get rid of all foreign aid. We’re going to cut it all.” But it’s shortsighted if not outrightly foolish.

The simple reality is that every time America is making its presence known in any government across the world, it will be far more effective when it delivers bread than when it delivers bombs. And the next thing I think we ought to do, if we really are the Christians we claim to be, is to want to make sure that we do not turn our backs on the suffering we see. [...] As as a Christian believer myself, it would be impossible for me to have read the gospels of Jesus, to look upon a scene like that and not be moved to the point of action, and to just simply be moved to the point of compassion that did not result in doing something, would be un-Christian.

Watch the highlights from Huckabee’s remarks:

Gingrich spoke at the event immediately following Huckabee, but did not address the former Arkansas governor’s comments or his opposition to foreign aid. Gingrich instead claimed that preparing for an electromagnetic pulse attack — what scientists and nuclear experts dismiss as “far-fetched” — was a good use of American resources.

Tonight during the CBS/National Journal GOP presidential foreign policy debate, Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) said that if he were president, “every country is going to start at zero dollars” in American foreign aid. “We need a president of the United States working with a Congress that sends a clear message to every country. It doesn’t make any difference whether it’s Pakistan, Afghanistan or whether it’s India,” he said.

Later in the debate, debate co-moderater Scott Pelley read a question from Twitter that asked, “Does governor Perry’s foreign aid starts at zero include Israel?” “Absolutely,” Perry said:

PELLEY: Does governor Perry’s foreign aid starts at zero include Israel?

PERRY: Well @GovernorPerry would tweet back at her that absolutely, every country would start at zero. Obviously Israel is a special ally and my bet is we would be funding them at some substantial level. But it makes sense for everyone to come in at zero and make your case.

Watch it:

The U.S. has committed to a 10-year agreement to provide Israel with security assistance with approximately $30 billion in aid. President Obama has upheld this agreement, but Perry’s stance would cancel that U.S. commitment.

The Republican Jewish Council tweeted that it hopes Perry gets briefed “on 10-year Memorandum of Understanding that governs US- Israel funding levels.”

“My faith requires me to support Israel,” Perry said in 2009. Apparently that faith only goes so far.

Transcript: Read more

Tuesday’s Republican debate contained several examples of creative foreign policy budget solutions. Michele Bachmann suggested, to much applause, that Iraq should “reimburse” the U.S. for “what we have done to liberate” them. But former Massachusetts governor stepped forward with a new proposal to have China take over the U.S.’s humanitarian aid responsibilities around the world. He said:

Part of [the foreign aid budget] is humanitarian aid around the world. I happen to think it doesn’t make a lot of sense for us to borrow money from the Chinese to go give to another country for humanitarian aid. We ought to get the Chinese to take care of the people that are taking that borrowed money today.

Watch it:

What Mitt Romney doesn’t mention is that China already has an active foreign aid policy in Africa. And the aid rarely comes with onerous conditions like anti-corruption measures, government and economic reforms and accountability for how the money is spent. A Council on Foreign Relations report on Chinese efforts to secure access to African oil, says:

International observers say the way China does business—particularly its willingness to pay bribes, as documented by Transparency International, and attach no conditions to aid money—undermines local efforts to increase good governance and international efforts at macroeconomic reform by institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

While western economic aid is frequently criticized for requiring recipients to undergo at times disastrous economic reforms, the Chinese model is aimed toward securing access to natural resources with few strings attached to aid dollars.

A recent Chinese government report on foreign aid in Africa suggests that its aid “falls into the category of south-south cooperation and is mutual help between developing countries,” but critics charge that Chinese aid in Africa has frequently been used to strengthen authoritarian governments and feeds corruption.

After the U.S. abandoned Zaire strongman Mobutu Sese Seko, China stepped in, sending an estimated 1,000 Chinese technicians to work on agriculture and forestry projects in the early 1990s.

And earlier this year, China’s foreign minister pushed for the lifting of sanctions against Zimbabwe, provided an additional $7.5 million in aid to Robert Mugabe’s government and signed a new bilateral agreement between the two countries.

While Mitt Romney seems to think that encouraging China to take over the U.S.’s humanitarian assistance responsibilities is an easy and cost-free method of cutting the federal budget, he should take a closer look at how U.S. foreign policy interests in Africa might be effected by increasing the influence of Chinese foreign aid.

Our guest blogger is Sarah Margon, associate director for Sustainable Security at the Center for American Progress.

Earlier this month the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET) released survey results indicating that yet another region in Somalia succumbed to official famine. Conditions throughout Somalia are expected to deteriorate even further in the coming months, particularly as the October rains approach. An increased prevalence of diseases like cholera and severe diarrhea means an already weakened population will be further debilitated.

According to the U.N.’s humanitarian agency, OCHA, an estimated 585,000 urban Somalis are projected to be in crisis by December if relief interventions are not scaled up. Worse still, the U.N.’s Food Security Analysis and Nutrition Unit for Somalia has officially announced that 750,000 people are at risk of imminent starvation and death in the coming four months.

These numbers are basically equivalent to every single person in Washington, DC — or almost everyone in San Francisco — facing starvation unless they begin receiving food, water, and medical attention from an outside source now.

In response to the lackluster international effort and the growing urgency, 20 aid organizations recently released a statement calling for an all-inclusive dialogue “to put people’s lives before politics in order to save thousands of lives.” This call for a diplomatic push is vital; the Somali population is on death’s doorstep.

A prime opportunity could present itself later this week as the international contact group for Somalia gathers in Denmark. Ironically, the cornerstone of this meeting is the recently agreed political reform Road Map, not the metastasizing crisis of epic proportions. As international donors, key regional actors, and Somali officials meet in Copenhagen, they will focus on priority tasks for reforming Somalia’s feeble Transitional Federal Government. They are likely to touch tangentially on the urgent humanitarian needs but there seems to be no plan for a robust diplomatic response. Certainly, immediate relief responses need to be linked to a more comprehensive approach if they are to be sustainable. But, crafting (yet another) governance plan for a functional Somali government just doesn’t make a ton of sense when the survival prognosis for much of the population is bleak.

The options to stop the worsening crisis are few and the likelihood of success is slipping away. The restrictions placed on aid groups — by all parties to the conflict — as well as the international donor community are significant impediments to accessing those in need. And while the United States is leading international community contributions with more than $600 million in assistance to the Horn of Africa, the U.N. appeal remains only 63 percent funded. Worse yet, with so many Somalis holding on by a thread, the increased drone attacks in Somalia create a perception problem about U.S. government priorities. Instead of rearranging the patio furniture tomorrow in Copenhagen, the first order of business at tomorrow’s meeting should be the creation of a diplomatic plan focused on enabling the unimpeded delivery of desperately needed aid.