[BITList] Gates thinks that he is going broke.

[John Feltham]

Bill Gates Urges Obama to Increase Spending

By Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 4, 2008; A17

The world's richest technology entrepreneur -- and leading
philanthropist -- came to Washington yesterday with a simple message
for President-elect Barack Obama: Increase spending.

Against the backdrop of a recession, Microsoft founder Bill Gates said
the federal government must increase deficit spending to stimulate the
economy and help the country's most vulnerable residents. Gates said
new investments are critical to building on recent improvements in
U.S. public education and fighting disease abroad, which he said could
be reversed if spending dries up.

Gates, who has used his fortune to build the world's largest
foundation, redefining the meaning of mega-philanthropist, said his
foundation will increase the amount of its grants next year, despite
declines in its $35 billion endowment caused by the sagging economy.
He called on Obama to follow through on his campaign commitment to
double U.S. foreign assistance to $50 billion by the end of his first
term.

"In a crisis, there is always a risk that you take your eyes off the
future and you sacrifice long-term investments for short-term gains,"
Gates said in a speech at George Washington University. "You have to
seek both. . . . We should have a bigger goal than getting the economy
growing again. I think we should expand the number of people who are
contributing to the economy and benefiting from it."

Gates described the financial crisis as an opportunity for innovation,
likening it to the economic woes of the 1970s, which gave rise to
America's information technology boom, during which Microsoft was
born. "Difficult times can launch great ideas," he said.

Later, in a broad interview with The Washington Post, Gates also
lamented the state of the District's struggling public schools, which
have received hundreds of millions of dollars from his foundation, but
had high praise for efforts by Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee.

Gates's foundation funds charter schools, scholarships and other
programs for the city's poorest students.

"It's a very hard job, and whether it's the facilities or the
personnel issues, somebody had to come in and really point out that
the students are not getting what they deserve," he said of Rhee. "The
irony [is] that it's almost the highest spending per pupil in the
country, and it's almost the worst set of outcomes of students in the
country -- and this is the nation's capital. You'd think that in terms
of effective spending of dollars and outcomes, that D.C. would be a
model city, and, in fact, it has been the exact opposite."

As much as the Gates Foundation invests in U.S. education -- its
grants last year totaled more than $400 million -- the investments
pale in comparison with government spending. The foundation's entire
endowment, for instance, would not be enough to fund public schools in
California for a single year.

Gates also uses his star power to draw attention to what he considers
priorities. Just one week after last month's election, Gates summoned
some education policy heavyweights -- Education Secretary Margaret
Spellings, New York schools chief Joel I. Klein, Rhee and leaders of
Obama's transition team -- to Seattle, where he unveiled his
foundation's new approach to education, which includes new investments
in community colleges.

Gates stepped down this summer from Microsoft, the technology company
he grew into a behemoth, to work full time on the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation, whose endowment receives more than a billion dollars
each year from investor Warren Buffett's fortune. At 53, Gates is
pioneering a new approach to philanthropy, applying the risk-taking
and results-based philosophy of an entrepreneur to solving some of the
world's most chronic problems.

In the interview, Gates likened his role at the foundation to running
Microsoft. "How do you find the smartest people, and how do you create
teams around them where they've got the right set of skills? How do
you take on things where you're going to have failures and learn from
those failures, be willing to do things that are risky, some of which
will end up being a complete dead end, and have a set of outcomes:
lives saved."

The foundation is akin to a start-up. "It's like a large company with
a big vision and a determination to grow rapidly," said Duke
University professor Joel L. Fleishman, who studies philanthropy. "But
in this case, it's not growing to make money. It's growing to figure
out how to give away money in an orderly and effective fashion."

Philanthropic leaders have looked upon the foundation's rise with awe.
"It's the largest in the world by a factor of two, and that's
astonishing," said Harvey P. Dale, a nonprofit law professor at New
York University. But, he said, some leaders "are jealous of it, some
feel threatened by it, including some of the foundations who were
hugely dominant and now, by comparison, are relatively modest."

But many other philanthropists try to emulate Gates. "When you're as
large as Gates, the market moves when you move," said Larry Brilliant,
a health expert who directs Google's giving.

"Great public health accomplishments on a global scale require
prescience. They require resources. They require scientific and
managerial excellence, and maybe most importantly, they require
leadership and public will," Brilliant said. "This is something only
Gates can do."

It is too soon to determine whether Gates's work will have a lasting
impact, experts said.

"The jury is definitely still out," said Fleishman, who has written a
history of foundations. "They're going about things in the right way,
but it is still too early to say that they have had an unqualified
success. . . . The problems are just so big."

Asked what his legacy may be in 15 years, Gates said he hopes it would
be as a catalyst for "dramatic improvement in global health. . . . I
expect that we would have played a role in a dramatic reduction in
disease in many of the top areas: malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS,
childhood diseases."