President Trump May Cut +50% of UN Funding
50 percent is halfway to 100 percent. Of course the FP piece predictably wails about the consequences to the UN’s useless aid programs that accomplish nothing except to fatten bureaucrats and fund terrorists.
State Department staffers have been instructed to seek cuts in excess of 50 percent in U.S. funding for U.N. programs… the White House is scheduled on Thursday to release its 2018 budget proposal, which is expected to include cuts of up to 37 percent for spending on the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign assistance programs, including the U.N., in next year’s budget. The United States spends about $10 billion a year on the United Nations.
That’s $10 billion too much. USAID is another sinkhole.
On March 9 in New York, U.S. diplomats in a closed-door meeting warned key U.N. members, including wealthy donors from Europe, Japan, and South Korea, to “expect a big financial constraint” on U.S. spending at the United Nations, said one European diplomat.
“There are rumors of big cuts to the State Department budget, but again, on our side, no figures,” the diplomat said.
Good. Bush tried to rein in UN spending. Obama turned on the spigot. It’s time to turn it off again. Ideally we ought to pull out of the UN altogether. But reducing the money we spend on it and redirecting it to a worthwhile project, like a nice big wall, is a good start.
The United States has to pay just over 22 percent of the U.N.’s $2.5 billion administrative budget. Additionally, Washington pays billions of dollars for peacekeepers and helps underwrite a swath of other programs that fight hunger, settle refugees, and battle climate change… If Washington fails to honor its funding commitments to the U.N.’s regular budget, which is obligatory, it could lose its voting rights in the General Assembly.
Good. That would make a push for withdrawal easier to sell.
