Waste of Money

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton predicted the U.N. would suffer “grave harm” unless Secretary-General Kofi Annan “personally and publicly” repudiated his colleagues June 6 speech calling for more consistent and less hostile engagement from America. The Secretary-General has refused to do so. The question now is whether the U.N. is at death’s door?

The U.S. is the largest donor to the U.N. It contributes 22 percent of the regular operating budget and nearly 27 percent of the peacekeeping budget. It contributed $438 million to the U.N.’s 2005 budget of more than $1.8 billion. Congress repeatedly threatens to withhold or cut U.S. dues unless the U.N. reforms. In the 1990’s, the U.S. piled up so much debt in delinquent dues that its voting rights in the General Assembly were jeopardized. A U.S. proposal to tie the 2006 and 2007 budget process to reforms was opposed. The U.S. proposed the U.N. set an interim budget for the first three or four months of 2006 pending the resolution of a stalemate over management reforms.

The latest proposed reforms were recommended by a panel mandated by Congress led by Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, and George Mitchell, a former Senate Democratic leader. The panel’s report, released in June 2005, called for corporate-style oversight bodies, personnel standards and accounting reforms. It also recommended the creation of a rapid reaction capability from its member states’ armed forces to prevent genocide, mass killing and sustained major human rights violations before they occur.

The Gingrich-Mitchell task force was one of six investigations of the U.N. initiated in Washington. Five Congressional committees and the Justice Department conducted investigations into the U.N. oil-for-food program. Isn’t it time the hearings, studies and money wasted by Congress on the U.N. be put to better use?

Is it any wonder so many Americans are opposed to the U.S. paying its dues to the U.N. -- including U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton before he was appointed to the post, who maintained that the U.S. has no legal obligation to pay its U.N dues. – and expressed his opposition to the U.N. as an organization or being in the U.S.?

The time wasted by the Senate on confirmation hearings of John Bolton’s nomination as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. was epic and classic waste of U.S. taxpayer time and money. After countless hearings and debates, his nomination was rejected by the Senate yet President Bush used a constitutional provision that allows presidents to make temporary appointments without Senate approval during a congressional recess. It is doubtful the presidential power to bypass the Senate was intended to be used to escape opposition to a sensitive appointment. It was the first time since the U.N.’s founding in 1945 that the U.S. has made the appointment using a backdoor procedure.