Reply #38: read the US cost of the UN and weep. [View All]

[Hunting Deer]

For years, we've been paying 25 percent of the budget while being treated like a Third World nonentity. Sob stories about the UN's "financial crisis" deserve a belly laugh. The UN's cash shortage is caused by its corrupt and extravagant spending, not by a backsliding or penurious United States.

The general annual UN budget has expanded from $20 million and 1,500 employees in 1945, to $10 billion and 50,000 employees today. Of this, U.S. taxpayers are contributing an estimated $4 billion a year.

The United States is assessed 25 percent of the UN's general budget, double that of any other nation. Japan is assessed 12.45 percent, the United Kingdom 8.93 percent, and more than 90 countries only 0.01 percent each. The other UN countries even ganged up and voted the U.S. off of the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions which makes up the UN budgets.

When he was Secretary General, Boutros-Ghali endorsed the notion that the UN should impose global taxes in order to relieve the UN of any accountability for contributions from its member nations. The first thing Madeleine Albright should do is demand that UN Secretary General Annan repudiate that impudent suggestion.

The UN "peacekeeping" budget has expanded from $700 million in 1990 to $3.5 billion today. The UN assesses the United States 31.7 percent of the "peacekeeping" budget (U.S. law now limits us to 25 percent), compared with 8.5 percent for Russia, 6.3 percent for the United Kingdom, and 7.6 percent for France, all of whom have more direct interest in the various UN expeditions than we have.