Republicans put financial pressure on UN

Washington Times:

Republicans in Congress moved yesterday to cut U.S. contributions to the United Nations budget just one day before the world body is scheduled to lift a budget cap imposed by the United States and other donors and to resume spending as usual.
At least $17 million has been sliced this week from the Bush administration's appropriations request for the U.N. regular budget, as frustration with the United Nations continues to fester among conservative lawmakers.
Rep. Scott Garrett, New Jersey Republican, yesterday won approval in a House subcommittee to cut $2 million from the U.S. contribution to the U.N. budget, saying that taxpayer money should not be used to lobby the U.S. government.
He was referring to a recent speech by Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown, who told two left-leaning think tanks, the Center for American Progress and the Century Foundation, that Washington should do more to defend the international organization in public.
Another $15 million was diverted from the $1.28 billion request for contributions to international organizations to fund domestic law-enforcement programs. Rep. Michael McCaul, Texas Republican, successfully demanded that the United States should not pay anything toward the new Human Rights Council as long as countries on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism such as Cuba serve on the 47-member body.
Meanwhile, Rep. Henry J. Hyde, Illinois Republican, will soon introduce a bill urging the United States "to use its voice, vote and influence at the United Nations" to seek a system of proportional voting in the 192-member General Assembly.
Under such a system, the United States -- which provides 22 percent of the U.N. budget -- would cast 22 percent of the total votes on finance-related issues. If the world body does not agree to this and passes a budget without U.S. consent, the United States could hold back 25 percent of its dues.
Under the U.N. Charter, each member nation casts a single vote in the world body.

...
Rep. McCaul is the congressman from my district here in Texas and I like his proposal. It is a nice passive aggressive way to attack the "Human Rights" facade at the UN with all its despot member states. Hyde's proposal is also interesting and you would be unlikely to see such a proposal from a Democrat controlled congress. He is retiring after this year and will be missed.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t...
Read more

Is the F-35 obsolete?

Headline USA: Pentagon Fires Back after Musk Calls Its Most Expensive Project ‘Obsolete’ 'Yeah, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Mr. Musk is, currently, a private citizen, I'm not going to make any comments about what a private citizen may have to say about the F-35....'   ... ... Drones appear to be replacing jets for many operations.  The Russia-Ukraine war is an example of that.  Drones are often hard to detect and can be used for intelligence operations as well as for attacking enemy targets.  It would not surprise me to see drones engaging other drones in combat.  They also cost much less than manned fighters.  
Read more