House Republicans are planning to introduce legislation Tuesday that will force major changes at the United Nations, an organization that the bill’s author has called a “stew of corruption, mismanagement and negligence.”
The bill, by Republican House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, would require the UN adopt a voluntary budget model, in which countries selectively choose which UN agencies to fund.
The bill is expected to be introduced on Tuesday, and will also end funding for Palestinian refugees and limit the use of U.S. funds only to projects directly outlined by Congress.
An aide familiar with the legislation told Bloomberg News that shifting the UN budget to a voluntary system would encourage competition for funds and better performance from UN agencies.
Ros-Lehtinen’s leverage for change at the U.N. is the large amount of the international body’s budget that the American taxpayer has traditionally been responsible for. The United States pays 22 percent of the UN’s regular operations budget, and is assessed 27 percent of the peacekeeping budget. U.S. payments totaled $3.35 billion in 2010, of which $2.67 billion was spent on peacekeeping operations worldwide.
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