House to Cut UN Funding

This week, following from this post, the US House voted to pass the Hyde Bill which would tie an exhaustive list of UN reforms directly to the US payment of dues within two years. If the UN does not match every reform, the US will pay only 50% of their dues, crippling the UN's financial situation. The Bill will be introduced into the Senate, and if it passes there, the President will decide whether to sign or veto it. He has already stated he is against this drastic act, as are many others.

Kofi Annan, of course, has introduced his own comprehensive reform plan for the UN.

Hyde's bill, for example, would unilaterally reduce Washington's share of the U.N.'s regular biannual budget from 25 percent to only 22 percent. It also mandates that once the budget is approved, it cannot increase without consensus agreement (giving Washington or any other government an effective veto), and, in any case, cannot increase beyond 10 percent, thus depriving the world body of its ability to cope with unanticipated emergencies.

It also calls for shifting 18 programs, including economic and social affairs, least-developed countries, trade and development, refugee protection, international drug control, and Palestinian refugee, from the regular assessed budget to voluntarily funded programs, thus giving ”all countries more control over how to best invest their contributions,” as Hyde said.

The bill is a drastic and crippling effort, aimed at heeling the UN to reflect primarily the interests of the US [ this is, of course, in concert with the effort to install John Bolton as the US' Ambassador ]. Clearly the UN needs drastic reforms, but in so refusing the funding to make the reforms the US becomes a counterproductive antagonist to reform of the UN rather than a forming partner of internationalism. This does little to aid in the ligitimization of the US' supposed desire to be percieved in the world as anything other than a moody behemoth ready to trample on the world at will.

And, to play a game of policy and interaction: perhaps Hyde's desire to turn the UN programs into elective funding exercises should be inverted and applied to the US tax-code, as per one of Long-Eared Ronin's suggestions. Perhaps then I could specify what percentage of my taxes I wish to go to the failed and moronic Invasion of Iraq and what percentage I would like to go to internationalist programs [such as the UN], global development, and aid programs.