The U.N. budget battles to come
When President Obama spoke before the U.N. General Assembly last year, he announced that the United States had "paid its bills" to the organization. It was a major applause line that helped Obama distance himself from the Bush administration’s U.N. policy. It was also not completely accurate. According to the United Nations, the U.S. still ...
When President Obama spoke before the U.N. General Assembly last year, he announced that the United States had "paid its bills" to the organization. It was a major applause line that helped Obama distance himself from the Bush administration's U.N. policy. It was also not completely accurate. According to the United Nations, the U.S. still owes more than $600 million. And there is almost zero chance that Congress will appropriate those funds.
When President Obama spoke before the U.N. General Assembly last year, he announced that the United States had "paid its bills" to the organization. It was a major applause line that helped Obama distance himself from the Bush administration’s U.N. policy. It was also not completely accurate. According to the United Nations, the U.S. still owes more than $600 million. And there is almost zero chance that Congress will appropriate those funds.
What Obama was referring to was a very large appropriation by the new Democratic Congress to wipe away additional arrears accumulated during the last years of the Bush administration. Most of this debt came from the difference between what the U.S. is billed for peacekeeping operations and what Congress is willing to pay. The roughly $600 million that remains unpaid goes back several decades and is the product of Congressionally-mandated withholdings based on a variety of policy differences with the organization.
At times, the American unwillingness to pay up on time has created near crises at the U.N.; even in the best of times, it’s an irritant. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon reportedly called the United States a "deadbeat" during a Capitol Hill meeting last year. But make no mistake: from the U.N.’s standpoint, the Obama administration in the White House and Congress in the hands of the Democrats is the best of times when it comes to U.N. dues. Come November, things may look very different. Traditional American skepticism about the U.N. and new zeal for budget-cutting may create ideal conditions on the Hill for fights over U.N. dues.
David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist
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