Kitchen Diplomacy
The U.S. delegation to the United Nations is keen to shave the U.N.’s annual budget of $1.25 billion, which has not increased in almost a decade. One U.S. suggestion: Shut down the United Nations Information Center (UNIC) in Washington, D.C., which briefs lawmakers and the general public on U.N. activities. UNIC costs the United Nations ...
The U.S. delegation to the United Nations is keen to shave the U.N.'s annual budget of $1.25 billion, which has not increased in almost a decade. One U.S. suggestion: Shut down the United Nations Information Center (UNIC) in Washington, D.C., which briefs lawmakers and the general public on U.N. activities. UNIC costs the United Nations $1 million per year to operate. The United States funds 22 percent of the U.N. budget, so the U.S. share of UNIC funding equals $220,000. What else could Washington do with the money?
The U.S. delegation to the United Nations is keen to shave the U.N.’s annual budget of $1.25 billion, which has not increased in almost a decade. One U.S. suggestion: Shut down the United Nations Information Center (UNIC) in Washington, D.C., which briefs lawmakers and the general public on U.N. activities. UNIC costs the United Nations $1 million per year to operate. The United States funds 22 percent of the U.N. budget, so the U.S. share of UNIC funding equals $220,000. What else could Washington do with the money?
- Supply one third of the $600,000 the State Department has committed to renovating the kitchen in the apartment of the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York.
- Pay for 94 hours of flight time for a B-2 stealth bomber.
- Cover the business- and first-class travel of Assistant Secretary of Defense John Stenbit ($68,000) and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Jack Dyer Crouch ($70,000) during the last two years.
- More than double the U.S. Agency for International Development’s $137,000 grant to the Iraqi Nursing Association to improve nursing services at Iraq’s hospitals.
- Purchase 33,333 Meals Ready to Eat (MREs).
- Pay the yearly salaries of four mid-level Foreign Service officers in 2004.
- Purchase 2,315 gas masks.
- Remove 24 carvings of deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s head at $8,750 each [the price paid by the Coalition Provisional Authority to remove heads from Hussein’s presidential palace].
- Quadruple the government’s $50,000 program to combat feral hogs in Missouri.
Sources: Associated Press, GAO, Washington Post, USAID, Citizens Against Government Waste
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