Congressman Henry Hyde has sponsored a House bill that would push for the UN to enact 39 separate reforms or the US will withdraw half its funding. The US contributes 22% of the UN budget.
“Over the years, as we listened to the counsels for patience, the U.N.’s failings have grown,” said House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., sponsor of the measure. “The time has finally come where we must in good conscience say ‘enough.'”
Hyde was joined by lawmakers with a litany of complaints against what they said was the U.N.’s lavish spending, its coddling of rogue regimes, its anti-America, anti-Israel bias and recent scandals such as the mismanagement of the oil-for-food program in Iraq and the sexual misconduct of peacekeepers.
The UN must reform, elsewise the United States should not only withhold funding, it should withdraw from the organization entirely. If the UN cannot reform itself to control it’s incredibly corrupt bureaucracy and end their racism against Israel, then the UN is unworthy of support. The corruption at Turtle Bay is beyond intolerable, and if the UN has any desire to become an organization that does more than pass meaningless resolutions, it must be willing to reform itself to meet basic standards of transparency and accountability.
If all the UN wants to be is a club for pompous kleptocrats, then it is better left abandoned.
We are not leaving the UN any time soon. This is simply an attempt by Congress to get some attention and it also allows the Bush admin to play the good cop in its dealings with the UN…for once!