With eye on domestic debt, US should cut UN funding

As debt for domestic programs grows, The US should consider cutting funds to the United Nations. This sprawling bureaucracy has become nothing more than a political mechanism interested in power and wealth redistribution.

Neil Stevens, in an article at Red State titled ‘It’s time to defund the United Nations,’ said, “In 2009 we were assessed 22% of the budget of the UN, and paid out slightly under 24% of what was collected, thanks to the Tax Equalization Fund system*. So in practice we paid about a quarter of the UN budget. Without us, the UN has to do some serious belt tightening.”

Note Stevens placed an asterisk after that quirky phrase the ‘Tax Equalization Fund System.’ Stevens explained, “The UN skims off of every UN salary a private withholding tax, called a staff assessment. Those staff assessments go into the Tax Equalization Fund. In 2009 every country got about 10% of its dues knocked off by the TEF, except the US because our share was used to pay the taxes of every UN staffer that owed US income tax on his UN salary. Essentially the UN taxes its employees to subsidize the UN dues of Japan, Germany, and every other country not named the United States of America.”

Despite US generosity, UN secretary Ban Ki-moon called the US a ‘deadbeat donor’ in 2009.

Judging by numerous UN statements and actions, I believe the UN harbors an attitude of hostility towards the U.S. Personally, I think the UN was another of Democrat president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s bad ideas. The Miller Center offers some background on the founding of the UN, understating the price Poland paid for Soviet cooperation.

The UN was originally seen as a means of preventing war—providing nations a forum to work out disputes without weapons. On that mission the UN has failed miserably and often.

There is a trickle down effect of negativity towards the U.S. At the Facebook page for the South-South Cooperation Group, one poster asked, "is it safe to discuss here? any northerners spying? lol." South-South is the effort to strengthen cooperation among so-called 'developing countries,' the designation China enjoys. And US taxpayers would be considered 'northerners.'

As the world political body has mushroomed, so have US dues. Stevens estimates our direct payment at $598,292,101, but it’s likely there’s more tucked away in myriad programs the UN grows.

Progressives harp on government transparency, but little is required of the UN. The Heritage Foundation blog reported on a matter in  March, 2009, that might have made Americans angry if government-allied media had seen fit to publicize it.

Heritage said, “The UN Administrative Tribunal (UNAT) recently ordered the UN to pay the legal fees of Benon Sevean, the disgraced former chief of the Oil-For-Food program who is hiding from U.S. indictments of bribery and conspiracy to commit wire fraud in Cyprus. The UN said it would abide by UNAT’s decision. So our ‘deadbeat’ taxpayers are going to pay nearly $1 million in legal fees for a fugitive who led the manipulation of a $60 billion UN program that was steeped in bribery, kickbacks, corruption, and fraud on a global scale.”

I realize it’s not likely the US will pull out of the UN, but it certainly makes sense to reduce our levels of funding. Russia and China should pick up their own pace of funding. At the moment, I can’t see a single benefit the UN delivers to the US taxpayer. Consider Oil for Food, the failure of UN policy on North Korea and the climate change sham—it makes no sense for the US taxpayer to fund a world body hostile to our own interests.

Democrats like President Barack Obama bend over backwards for the UN. But with new faces in the US House of Representatives, it makes sense to discuss cutting UN funding as soon as Congress convenes in January.

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(Commentary by Kay B. Day/Dec. 20, 2010)