U.S. Taxes and the United Nations Money Pit
In remarks Thursday to the UN General Assembly’s budget oversight committee (known at the UN as the “Fifth Committee” or ACABQ) Torsella spelled out some of the profligacies of a UN budget which for a decade now “has grown dramatically, relentlessly, and exponentially,” more than doubling to $5.4 billion for 2010-2011, from $2.6 billion for 2001-2002. (He was talking about the “core” budget, which is actually just a fraction of an overall UN system budget that has soared to somewhere north of $25 billion, and to which the U.S. in 2010 contributed almost $7.7 billion.)
Torsella noted that the largest UN cost is for personnel, and the total dollar amount for the UN payroll (that would be the secretariat’s core payroll, not the far larger UN system) has grown over the past decade by 70%. More concretely, he said that the average UN staffer now collects compensation totaling $238,000 biannually. That works out to $119,000 on average per year, for more than 10,000 UN staffers covered by the regular budget.
To illustrate what that actually means, Torsella noted that while $100,000 is a mere rounding error to a UN proposing a $5 billion-plus regular budget, for Americans it represents the average federal taxes collected from 16 hard-working American families over the course of a full year. Credit Torsella again, that’s a vivid way of explaining just what’s going on with those soaring UN budgets. In other words, it takes the aggregate federal taxes of thousands of American families, working year-round, to sustain the tax-free six-figure incomes of all those UN bureaucrats on the sky-rocketing UN payroll — for which the U.S. pays the biggest share.
UN profligacy, coupled with such outrages as last week’s three-ring anti-Semitic circus at the General Assembly, is reaching the point at which American voters may seriously take notice. Washington pols would be wise to view this not as a partisan issue, but as an American issue. If the Obama administration doesn’t like the idea of Democrats signing on to a UN reform bill from the Republican Ros-Lehtinen, then it’s time for some competing proposals for reducing the gusher of U.S. tax dollars into the UN, and conditioning U.S. money on genuine UN reform. What we’re seeing right now from the administration — or at least from its new envoy for UN management and reform — is a long-overdue and much-needed expose of at least a few aspects of UN extravagance and abuse, but no real plan to stop it.
sloshing billions of American tax dollars into the UN, with little accountability and regardless of UN performance, is a chump’s game
Fortunately enough for the UN it appears there are an endless supply of chumps here in the US.
Hi chumps!
Graft, corruption, waste, and a stage for people who hate us to preen and be important … all at our expense. We are fools to keep funding this organization.
This also describes the Obama administration. We are fools on a much greater level.
Let’s see what the U.N. has done for us lately:
1) Eat up huge chunks of American dollars for real estate and operating costs (champagne tastes, NOT beer budget)
2) Perverts as soldiers “enforcing” “peace” around the world — causing untold trauma
3) Rampant hypocrisy — awards in the name of slimeballs, slimeballs receiving awards
4) Not one, single, solitary, achievement of any note whatsoever
GET THE M***s OUT of here NOW.
The only “leverage” we Americans have inside that bastion of “attitude” and entitlement is the ominous possibility that we may actually withhold that 22% which we pay as support or “tribute” for those who routinely vote against any American proposals as automatically counter to the overall U.N. scheme of entitlement.
Our Veto ability supplements that very nicely, but as we see just about everywhere, “following the money” is the most accurate and effective control.
It’s positively Orwellian for us to continue this charade of supporting these smug “United” Nations sponges absorbing United States taxpayers cash which is sorely needed domestically inside America.
I agree wholeheartedly with Charlie G. Our historians are overwhelmingly committed to Rooseveltian internationalism, about which I wrote here. See http://clarespark.com/2011/06/30/links-to-review-essay-on-hemingway-spy-mission-to-china/. These “moderates” are everywhere.
Screw the UN budget bill. Just get rid of the UN. Get out and kick them out. They can set up shop in Geneva.
Geneva? Why not go the whole hog and move it to Mecca? That’s where it may as well be…
The 2 biggest mistakes the United States have made:
!: Allowing the United Nations to exist in New York–if anywhere.
2: Electing Barrack Obama
Agreed. Oh! there he is, the great OBAMA laughing at us. “You can never take this away from me anymore…” Hold that breathe fabio, YES we can and we always (if your nor for us) will.
So if we all change the names of our companies to UN, we too can enjoy a 6-figure, tax-free income? Hmmmn.
For starters, instead of providing cash to the UN, let’s call it that gov-fave term, in-kind contribution. We let them use the building and that’s our contribution. Period. Everything else has to come from other member states. Watch them scurry for the exits, determined to find a new location!
Meanwhile, we need to radically reduce (eliminate) our blind, idiotic funding of all these international entitlement/you-owe-us organizations. The UN is only one example.
The U.N. has run it’s course. It was established by sound people with the best interest for all but now there are more enemies of the United States and our allies having a say. My feeling is this: The U.S. out of the U.N. and the U.N. out of the U.S. OR, they could just kick out the enemies of the free world but, that would be politically incorrect. At our expense.
“Rather, America’s out-sized dues are viewed by the UN’s other member states, and many on its staff, as an entitlement.”
It is logical for liberal Americans and Europeans to run the UN, since it IS one massive entitlement. That is what Europe is and what America is becoming, one massive entitlement culture and the UN is the centerpiece of that culture.
The problem is, the UN has not counted on the new conservative awakening that is spreading all over America. We saw it in the special elections for governor in New Jersey and Virginia, we really saw it in the elections of 2010, and we’re really, really, going to see more of it in 2012. The UN has degenerated into welfare for bureaucrats around the world who actually think it DOES something of value. What they fail to realize is that all of the charity work the UN does can be done more cheaply and more efficiently by private organizations and that the UN is an utter failure when it comes to actually solving some sort of international crisis. Where has the UN been recently regarding Iran’s quest for a nuclear bomb (which it will soon have) and where has the UN been regarding the massacres that are now taking place in Syria? The UN eventually saw fit to intervene in the killings in Rwanda, but why not Syria? It chose to take a stand in oil-rich Libya, but why not a bigger stand in oil-poor Sudan? You could cut the hypocrisy at the UN with a knife, yet we still keep funding these parasites. It’s about time we stopped giving them a dime and let the Europeans, who always seem to love to give to huge liberal bureaucracies that do very little, the pleasure of funding these deadbeats.
The time to leave the UN has come. Let it just wither away and die due to lack of financing, before it takes us down with it.
You do understand why Obama wants this bill to fail, right? Because he’s planning on being Secretary General/King of the World as soon as he finishes destroying America as we know it. He wants to have as much capital to spend on his commie plans as possible. Anti-up, chumps!
Well, when I look back through history I find one thing incredibly remarkable. Alger Hiss, former member of the White House and confirmed Soviet spy, is the one who drafted the entire concept of the UN.
In other words, the Soviet infiltration of the Democratic party was so successful that we’re still paying damages on it, long after the Soviets themselves collapsed.
To think that if Putin becomes “President” again he can re-institute the exact scheme that Stalin used is terrifying.
If the US stopped funding the UN, the thing would lapse into irrelevance almost immediately.
Without the UN, Zero would have one less venue for beclowning himself in front of foreign dignitaries.
We should withdraw from the UN and found a league of democratic nations. No tinpot dictators need apply.
Why do we give any foreign entity a subsidy? It’s all stolen anyway. Even Israel can pay for the military equipment they need.
Let’s not forget the perniciousness of the UN climate bureaucracy:
http://thegwpf.org/the-climate-record/3990-wikileaks-major-un-climate-programme-basically-a-farce.html
Please keep up the good work. No one else is reporting on this. Even more detail on the profligacy would help shame all of Congress to be concerned. Detailing out the benefits of the typical UN employee would shock the average American:
- Private education subsidies for children up to age 22
- Tax-free income
- Housing allowances/ free housing overseas
- The unfunded pension and other benefit liabilities
Also analysis of what would happen if the US stopped paying would be fascinating.
It seems to most critical thinking Americans, that now over 60+ yrs. of inept UN spending, no audits on that spending, rare guardians of people groups on borders or wartime areas, corruption of bureaucrats, the UN has no real function not only for world peace (which is always illusory) but no aid to American foreign policy interests.The free world should start its own org. like JFK-Nixon both proposed in the /60′s. The rest of the 3rd World one party tyrants can have their own org which will not be funded since the US funds almost everything world-wide anyhow! LOL And the US should propose that the building be moved to Geneva . No more NY perks for the perps.
Claudia – interesting article. But I always thought that conservative writers should at least get the facts right. UN SALARIES ARE NOT TAX EXEMPT. There is a thing called Staff Assessment, which is the same as a TAX. The UN takes this money and applies it against the country contribution to the regular budget. For example, the total of all Staff Assessment paid by Mexican Nationals working for the UN is subtracted from the Mexican Governments regular budget contributions. The United States is the ONLY country which does not follow this system. US citizens working at the UN must pay both UN Staff Assessment and US Income Taxes. It get’s real complicated for them. Very good points you bring up – but PLEASE – try to get the facts right.
aclay1 – the things you seem to state as facts are not FACTS. For your information – UN Pay is TAXED – there is no free housing, where did you hear that. Education allowances are given to staff member serving in foreign posts. I mean, if you are an American serving in say Sudan, do you want your child to have to learn Arabic and go to a local school – or to an English speaking school. Please, bash the UN all you want, they deserve part of it, but try to get your facts straight. If you want to seriously criticize the UN – at least know what you are talking about. Many of you sound like leftie types who could care less about FACTS.
Oh please get over yourself. Just because you spend nights in your room looking up the UN and reading about it does not make you the UN wonk you think you are.
The point is we should be defunding and forcing into exile the criminal enterprise known as the UN.
If we’re broke and looking for places to save money, our UN budget has “Kick Me” written on its back in BIG letters!
We are FOOL’S pure and simple !!!!
Isn’t $116,000 yearly barely enough to pay for any kind of civilized lifestyle in Manhattan?
I’d rather focus on the destructive actions the UN has taken than the salaries. To me, that’s a far more serious issue.
D
The problem is the Obama vision of the world. It would have the UN acting as the governing body for the entire world. Our military would become their military and act on their behalf. A parallel to this is the current vision of NATO. France and Britain directed the Libyan fiasco. The US acted as a helper in that matter. Now we learn that 20,000 anti-aircraft missiles are missing from the old Gaddafi arsenal. If we go back to the Clinton era we acted as a helper in the old Yugoslavian conflict. The effect was to create another Moslem nation. Lets tally the score. Clinton one new Moslem nation. Bush no new Moslem nations. Obama three new radical Moslem nations, not counting the new Palestine.
The Obama vision would put the UN in charge of the world. In effect it would put the Moslems in charge of the world.
Interesting that no Dems have signed on as co-sponsors of Ros-Lehtinen’s bill – it llustrates the lack of respect Dems have for their tax-paying constituents. The UN has been a U.S. money-gobbler for decades and what do we get in return? America-bashing, fraud, waste, excess, abuse, and being treated like a doormat! Well, I’m mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore!!! [OK - take deep breath & settle down here.]
Next year, vote against every Democrat who has not signed on Ros-Lehtinen’s bill next year (translation: vote against every Democrat). And I don’t care if that means voting for a Independent, Libertarian, Constitution, Green, or other political party candidate. Personally, I’d be happier with a bill that completely ends US funding of the UN, but I’m willing to start somewhere.