Ending global poverty is an issue that has largely escaped the 2016 presidential campaign. Inequality, terrorism, immigration, trade agreements and social issues have taken center stage. Yet many candidates support foreign aid as a key component of U.S. policy and believe that ending global poverty is in the best interest of the United States. Marco Rubio is one such candidate.
Rubio is unique in a way, in that his parents are immigrants who suffered under poverty in Cuba. In a 2014 press release, Rubio describes their situation. “My mother was one of seven girls whose parents often went to bed hungry so their children wouldn’t. My father lost his mother when he was nine. He left school and went to work at a local restaurant at about the same age of my youngest son now.”
Recognizing that his parents were not at fault for their hardship, Rubio says, “My parents, like most …