Bill Gates hopes Obama will double U.S. annual investment in foreign aid

PanARMENIAN.Net - Microsoft founder Bill Gates hopes President-elect Barack Obama and Congress immediately craft a wide-ranging stimulus package, to help jump-start the nation's sputtering economy, and double the United States' commitment to foreign aid.



"Clearly we need a stimulus that doesn't undermine the incentive for businesses to be careful about their spending and making those correct investments," Gates told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in an exclusive interview airing on The Situation Room on Wednesday and Thursday.



Gates, one of the world's richest men and founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is also calling on Obama to increase investments in the nation's education system and spur technological advances to improve agriculture, prevent disease, and promote economic growth in the world's poorest nations.



"The key point I'd make is that in addition to that stimulus, you've got to fund the kind of scientific work and educational investments that could really have us be a much better country as we emerge from the recession," he said.



On his Web site, Obama has pledged to double the United States' annual investment in foreign aid to $50 billion by the end of his first term, with the goal of fully funding debt cancellation for poor nations and fighting AIDS and global poverty.



Gates said he thinks Obama will live up to that commitment.



"Obviously it's the Congress that gets to actually vote the final decision for how the money is spent, but I do think he will get to that commitment," Gates said. "I am thrilled to be able to see that people are responding to the success stories. Aid from the United States did go up in the last eight years."