As a constituent and an Episcopalian deeply committed to America's efforts to fight deadly poverty, disease, and hunger throughout the world, I write to urge you to cosponsor a critical new bipartisan bill that begins the process of updating our nation's foreign-aid system for the 21st Century. The "Foreign Assistance Revitalization and Accountability Act of 2009" (S.1524), introduced by Senators Kerry and Lugar, represents a vital first step in the process of making something our nation does well - foreign aid - work even better. While U.S. foreign assistance represents less than one percent of the federal budget, it saves millions of lives around the world each year by helping fight extreme poverty and promote economic development. It puts children in school, helps women start businesses to provide for their families, prevents the spread of malaria and HIV, and assists farmers working to improve their crops local economies. On the other hand, the system has not been updated comprehensively since it was created in 1961 for a world facing an entirely different set of strategic and humanitarian challenges. Particularly at the present moment, when the global financial crisis has made for tight budgets everywhere, I want to be sure every dollar the U.S. spends on foreign aid is being spent efficiently to improve as many lives as possible and build a safer, more prosperous world. Specifically, it is time for Congress explicitly to elevate economic development and the alleviation of global poverty as a principal focus of American foreign policy, alongside defense and diplomacy. As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told the U.S. Global Leadership Campaign last year: "It has become clear that America's civilian institutions of diplomacy and development have been chronically undermanned and under-funded for far too long - relative to what we spend on the military, and more important, relative to the responsibilities and challenges our nation has around the world." S.1524 begins the process of doing just that. It initiates several concrete reforms to enhance the policy, planning, and evaluation capacity of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in order to make American development programs more responsive to the needs of people living in poverty, more effective in their implementation, and more accountable to taxpayers at home. Significantly, the bill stresses the intent of Congress that U.S. development policy should be used to reduce extreme poverty and hunger and promote good governance abroad. Far from being the final say in the process, S.1524 represents only a first step. The more challenging and detailed work of revising and updating the Foreign Assistance Act will need to come later. The steps required by S.1524, however, are critical and will lay the foundation for all that is to come. As an American, I am deeply proud of what our nation has accomplished through foreign aid over the past fifty years, and I hope to see even more accomplished in the next fifty. S.1524 sets into motion the steps that will ensure this. Please cosponsor this vital legislation. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your reply.