A Modest Proposal for Giving You Your Very Own UN Staffer

by Claudia Rosett @ PajamasMedia.Com

Click here for story on The Rosett report @ pajamasmedia.com

Don’t panic. This is hypothetical. But I’ve been thinking about those recent comments by the U.S. envoy for United Nations management and reform, Joseph Torsella, in his effort to illustrate the profligacy of the UN’s soaring core budget. Torsella just told the UN General Assembly’s budget committee that while the UN may regard $100,000 as a mere rounding error in a core budget now topping $5 billion per year, a big chunk of that money comes from U.S. taxpayers. According to Torsella, $100,000 represents the total federal taxes paid on average by 16 hard-working American families, laboring for a full year.

Torsella also said that for the more than 10,000 UN staffers paid out of the UN’s core budget, total compensation now averages $119,000 per staffer. At the UN, that kind of thing is tax-free.

So, let’s do a bit of arithmetic. U.S. taxes provide the funds for 22% of the UN’s core budget. So, out of a total of more than 10,000 UN staffers now making an average of $119,000 per year, the U.S. supports more than 2,200. Using Torsella’s ratios, for the U.S. to cover the salaries of each of these more than 2,200 staffers requires the total federal taxes paid over a full year by almost 20 average American working families. In round numbers, this means that roughly 44,000 average American working families toil for a full year to provide America’s share of the salaries paid to UN staff, over that same interval, out of the UN’s core budget.

Of course, one reason the UN gets away with its profligate, sky-rocketing budgets, staff numbers, and pay hikes for personnel is that the money from U.S. taxes is not collected from 44,000 specific working families. Instead, the bill is spread as a lesser-ticket item among millions of tax-paying Americans, most of whom are chiefly busy earning a living (and paying taxes), and don’t have time to focus on how the UN spends its share of the swag.

Why not amend that, and make it a lot more personal for a select number of average American taxpayers? Instead of paying the UN out of the general pot of federal tax revenues, the U.S. government could pick 44,000 average American working families, divide them into groups of 20, exempt them from all other federal tax claims, and assign each group its own personal UN bureaucrat to support. These taxpaying families could even be invited to take an interest in the individual UN staffers whose salaries have become their direct responsibility. They could peruse the list of UN benefits, cost-of-living adjustments, and other perquisites. They could cruise the web for news of the latest travels, reports, and other accomplishments of their assigned UN beneficiary/bureaucrat. They could drop by the UN offices in New York, and share a cappuccino, and check out the lifestyle for themselves. Then they could go home and get back to work, earning the money to pay the taxes to support the specific UN staffer with that average take-home pay of $119,000.

I’d wager that would provide a degree of valuable oversight to which the UN, during its entire 66 year history, has never, ever been exposed. It could work wonders in clarifying and focusing the current Washington debate over funding for the UN. (It could also have its highly entertaining moments.)

OK, I know. For a lot of very good reasons, U.S. tax policy does not work that way. Nor is it safe to give the UN any opportunity, however odd, to get its hooks directly into U.S. taxpayers. The UN has been angling for that for years, and in that direction lie horrors even worse than what goes on now. But as a thought experiment, it is interesting to imagine the average American working family taking a direct interest in the work habits and lifestyle of the average UN staffer, so richly supported by funds from the U.S. tax pot. What would they find they are getting for their money?

Jobs, jobs, jobs: the case for the UN

By David Bosco @ Foreign Policy

Click here for story on Foreign policy.Com

With anti-UN sentiment bubbling again on Capitol Hill, a top U.S. State Department official is defending the organization--in terms of American jobs. Esther Brimmer, assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, made the case in conjunction with a recent visit to Wall Street:

First, the UN helps sustain the global economic landscape that U.S. companies depend on. UN offices help protect American patents and intellectual property around the world. UN agencies promote global standards for things like international shipping, civil aviation, telecommunications, and postal services. Basically, if you’re an American company doing business across borders, odds are, you’re benefiting from the work the United States does in the UN.

Second, the UN spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year procuring goods and services from American companies. They spend more money here than in any other country in the world — more than $1.5 billion dollars last year alone. So, American companies in places like Texas, Florida, New Jersey, and elsewhere know that the UN is a significant source of income and jobs for small, medium, and large U.S. companies.

Third, the UN is a boost for New York’s economy. Aside from the thousands of diplomats and UN staff, the UN brings in hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. That means billions of dollars for local hotels, restaurants, and other businesses.

Brimmer's dollars-and-cents approach meshes with other recent attempts to pitch the UN to skeptical Americans as a fundamentally cost-saving enterprise. Even as they do so, however, U.S. officials are chiding UN officials for recent spending decisions. Via Bloomberg:

The U.S. ambassador for UN management and reform, Joseph M. Torsella, said today that the proposed $5.2 billion UN budget for the next two years would scrap only 44 jobs, a 0.4 percent reduction. After an “onslaught” of add-ons, the 2012-13 budget would rise more than 2 percent to $5.5 billion, he said.

“That is not a break from ‘business as usual’ but a continuation of it,” Torsella said in a speech in New York to the UN’s administrative and budgetary committee. “How does management intend to bring these numbers and costs back in line?”

There's a bit of tension between the two lines of argument. After all, don't more UN positions and higher UN salaries mean more spending on New York restaurants?

Citizen Control: United Nations global control of our economy, our country, our lives, our freedom

Open Government Partnership and United Nations Agenda 21

By Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh Monday, September 26, 2011

Click here for story on Canada Free Press

As Americans are trying to make sense of and understand the multi-faceted United NationsAgenda 21, new information emerges daily. Signed by George Bush, and implemented through non-governmental organizations “sub-rosa” work since 1992, UN Agenda 21 grows at the local, state, and federal levels with new rules, regulations, executive orders, private-public partnerships, and declarations, accelerating the United States’ inclusion into one world government.

Aggressive advertising by compliant progressive media is brainwashing unsuspecting Americans that UN Agenda 21 is protecting theenvironment and, to oppose it, would mean opposing the preservation of the environment, the destruction of the fragile eco-system, rejection of alternative, green energy, and selfish neglect of their children’s future.

The recent Solar Decathlon 2011(September 23-October 2) presented by the U.S. Department ofEnergy, in concert with several universities (Purdue, Middlebury College, Florida International, Ohio State, University of Maryland, University of Tennessee, Rutgers, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, University of Massachusetts, the City College of New York, Hampton University, Old Dominion University, the Southern California Institute of Architecture, California Institute of Technology, University of Calgary, Team China, Team Belgium, New Zealand’s Victoria University of Wellington, and University of Illinois) has displayed at West Potomac Park near the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C. exhibits showcasing how “to create an energy-efficient home, selecting and operating a solar-electric system, andbuilding a more sustainable future.”

The entire exhibit is tailored for “green building professionals.” Never mind that Solyndra, the California-based solar panel maker filed for bankruptcy protection on September 6 and fired all its 1,100 employees. With much White House fanfare, Solyndra received a $535 million loan guarantee, which was later granted by the Obama Administration. Private investors forked more than $1 billion into the company. It is alleged that investors and executives with Solyndra were substantial donors to Obama’s campaign and had spent large sums on lobbying.

Two other companies working on “alternative energy,” the darling phrase of liberals, have filed for bankruptcy because they could not compete with China’s subsidized solar panels and demand was low. Both companies received money from the $800 billion stimulus.

Solar panels have been subsidized by our federal government and states have given subsidies to taxpayers in the form of tax write-offs for the installation of solar panels. Cliff Stearns (R-Florida) said, “So I think the administration is on this fervent religion of green jobs and clinging to the idea that solar panel is the answer and it is not the answer.”

Fox News reported that Evergreen Solar Inc. received “$5.3 million of stimulus cash through a state grant to install 11,000 photovoltaic panels at 11 colleges and universities, a recycling facility, and an education center in Massachusetts.”

SpectraWatt from New York, a solar cell company, received a $500,000 grant from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory from the stimulus package to improve solar cells without changing current manufacturing process.

Never mind that close to twenty percent of the labor forced is unemployed and cannot afford to pay for the homes they currently own and rent, much less purchase solar panels. Through Agenda 21 requirements, Americans will eventually have to build or retrofit their homes with solar energy in order to meet the United Nations green agenda.

UN Agenda 21 is building through ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives) and its 600 affiliates in the United States the infrastructure of the new “green” alternative energy, solar and wind, while discouraging the use of fossil fuels such as oil, coal, and natural gas.

Under the noble mantra of saving the earth, the United Nations wants to change the way we live, eat, learn, communicate, move by controlling the economy, the environment, our health, and private property in the name of social equity (social justice). The ultimate goal is to have a one-world government under the aegis of the United Nations, controlled by a handful of individuals.

To bring us ever closer to this goal, world leaders congregated on September 20 at New York City’s Waldorf Astoria hotel in advance of the United Nations General Assembly, in order to formally launch a new initiative called the Open Government Partnership. During the day of discussion, they unveiled and signed the “declaration of principles.”

President Obama called at last year’s General Assembly for “specific commitments to promote government transparency.” Eight countries have endorsed the Open Government Partnership on September 20, 2011 and are publicly releasing open government plans:

• Brazil
• Indonesia
• Mexico
• Norway
• Philippines
• South Africa
• United Kingdom
• United States.

Under Increase the availability of information about governmental activities, which sounds benign and helpful to taxpayers, the first sentence is chilling. “Governments collect and hold information on behalf of people, and citizens have a right to seek information about governmental activities.”

Under Support Civic Participation, one sentence stands out. “We commit to protecting the ability of not-for-profit and civil society organizations to operate in waysconsistent with our commitment to freedom of expression, association, and opinion.” What happens when citizens’ opinions diverge from their commitment to freedom of expression?

Under Implement the highest standards of professional integrity throughout our administration, the commitment to have “robust anti-corruption policies” is scary. “We commit to maintaining or establishing a legal framework to make public information on the income and assets of national, high ranking public officials.” This brings to mind the economic police we used to have under communism. If a person’s income was reported by informants as excessive, the culprits were arrested, fined, and their excess-capacity goods or income confiscated. According to this principle, an informant would be protected. “We commit to enacting and implementing rules that would protect whistleblowers.” There will be “anti-corruption prevention and enforcement bodies.”

United Nations global control of our economy, our country, our lives, our freedom

Under Increase access to new technologies for openness and accountability, it is obvious that the public is encouraged and expected to snitch. “We commit to developing accessible and secure online spaces as platforms for delivering services, engaging the public, and sharing information and ideas.”

Although this signed declaration is non-binding and voluntary, thirty more countries are expected to join. The most astonishing detail is the fact that one of the “featured, leading private sector, non-profit and government innovators in the 21^st century” is Socrata, Kenya’s Open Government Portal.

“We commit to espouse these principles in our international engagement, and work to foster a global culture of open government that empowers and delivers for citizens, and advances the ideals of open and participatory 21^st century government.” I thought we elected officials and hired bureaucrats to run our government. When did we turn into a participatory 21^st government?

One more step towards a complete United Nations global control of our economy, our country, our lives, our freedom, and the erasure of our sovereignty with complete acquiescence of our government’s signatory.

Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh Bio

Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh Most recent columns

“Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh is a freelance writer (Canada Free Press, Modern Conservative, Anystreet.org, Romanian Conservative, Lucianne) and speaker who recently published a book about her 20-year experience with communist life, “Echoes of Communism,” available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle. Short essays describe health care, education, poverty, social engineering, and confiscation of property, among other subjects.

Dr. Johnson can be reached at:ileana1959@gmail.com

Globalization’s Government

Jeffrey D. Sachs @ Project-Syndicate.org

Click here for this story on Project-Syndicate.org

NEW YORK – We live in an era in which the most important forces affecting every economy are global, not local. What happens “abroad” – in China, India, and elsewhere – powerfully affects even an economy as large as the United States.

Economic globalization has, of course, produced some large benefits for the world, including the rapid spread of advanced technologies such as the Internet and mobile telephony. It has also reduced poverty sharply in many emerging economies – indeed, for this reason alone, the world economy needs to remain open and interconnected.

Yet globalization has also created major problems that need to be addressed. First, it has increased the scope for tax evasion, owing to a rapid proliferation of tax havens around the world. Multinational companies have many more opportunities than before to dodge their fair and efficient share of taxation.

Moreover, globalization has created losers as well as winners. In high-income countries, notably the US, Europe, and Japan, the biggest losers are workers who lack the education to compete effectively with low-paid workers in developing countries. Hardest hit are workers in rich countries who lack a college education. Such workers have lost jobs by the millions. Those who have kept their jobs have seen their wages stagnate or decline.

Globalization has also fueled contagion. The 2008 financial crisis started on Wall Street, but quickly spread to the entire world, pointing to the need for global cooperation on banking and finance. Climate change, infectious diseases, terrorism, and other ills that can easily cross borders demand a similar global response.

What globalization requires, therefore, are smart government policies. Governments should promote high-quality education, to ensure that young people are prepared to face global competition. They should raise productivity by building modern infrastructure and promoting science and technology. And governments should cooperate globally to regulate those parts of the economy – notably finance and the environment – in which problems in one country can spill over to other parts of the world.

The need for highly effective government in the era of globalization is the key message of my new book, The Price of Civilization. Simply put, we need moregovernment nowadays, not less. Yet the role of government also needs to be modernized, in line with the specific challenges posed by an interconnected world economy.

I wrote The Price of Civilization out of the conviction that the US government has failed to understand and respond to the challenges of globalization ever since it began to impact America’s economy in the 1970’s. Rather than respond to globalization with more government spending on education, infrastructure, and technology, Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980 by pledging to slash government spending and cut taxes.

For 30 years, the US has been going in the wrong direction, cutting the role of government in the domestic economy rather than promoting the investments needed to modernize the economy and workforce. The rich have benefited in the short run, by getting massive tax breaks. The poor have suffered from job losses and cuts in government services. Economic inequality has reached a high not seen since the Great Depression.

These adverse trends have been exacerbated by domestic politics. The rich have used their wealth to strengthen their grip on power. They pay for the expensive campaigns of presidents and congressmen, so presidents and congressmen help the rich – often at the expense of the rest of society. The same syndrome – in which the rich have gained control of the political system (or strengthened their control of it) – now afflicts many other countries.

Yet there are some important signs around the world that people are fed up with governments that cater to the rich while ignoring everyone else. Start with the growing calls for greater social justice. The upheavals in Tunis and Cairo were first called the Arab Spring, because they seemed to be contained to the Arab world. But then we saw protests in Tel Aviv, Santiago, London, and now even in the US. These protests have called first and foremost for more inclusive politics, rather than the corrupt politics of oligarchy.

Moreover, US President Barack Obama is gradually shifting toward the left. After three years in which his administration coddled corporate lobbyists, he has finally begun to emphasize the need for the rich to pay more taxes. This has come late in his term, and he might well continue to favor the rich and Wall Street in exchange for campaign contributions in 2012, but there is a glimmer of hope that Obama will defend a fairer budget policy.

Several European governments, including Spain, Denmark, and Greece, also seem to be moving in the same direction. Spain recently imposed a new wealth tax on high-net-worth taxpayers. Denmark elected a center-left government committed to higher government spending financed by new taxes on the rich. And Greece has just voted for a new property tax to help close its yawning fiscal deficit.

The European Commission has also called for a new Financial Transactions Tax (FTT) to raise around $75 billion per year. The Commission has finally agreed that Europe’s financial sector has been under-taxed. The new FTT might still face political opposition in Europe, especially in the United Kingdom, with its large and influential banking sector, but at least the principle of greater tax fairness is high on the European agenda.

The world’s most successful economies today are in Scandinavia. By using high taxes to finance a high level of government services, these countries have balanced high prosperity with social justice and environmental sustainability. This is the key to well-being in today’s globalized economy. Perhaps more parts of the world – and especially the world’s young people – are beginning to recognize this new reality.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is Professor of Economics and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also Special Adviser to United Nations Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals.

UNRWA is an impediment to peace

By DAVID BEDEIN @ The Jerusalem Post

UNRWA instills millions of Arab refugee descendants with false hope they'll be repatriated to 1948 villages.

A Middle East peace process ensued 34 years ago, when Egyptian president Anwar Sadat made an unprecedented peace effort, when he proclaimed a new policy of peace and reconciliation with Israel. Sadat headed the largest nation of the League of Arab Nations, the very entity which declared a war of extermination against the nascent state of Israel in 1948. The very same League of Arab Nations spawned the PLO in 1964 for the very same purpose: to liquidate the Jewish state.

The 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty, and the subsequent 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty which emanated from the seminal Sadat initiative, ignited hopes that the Israeli-Arab war would finally come to an end, while outstanding issues of the 1948 war would finally be resolved.

Festering issues from 1948 still include the vast property claims of nearly one million Jews from Arab countries who left almost all possessions behind, along with the claims of the descendants of half a million Arab refugees from 1948 war who left behind hundreds of Arab villages.

While Jewish refugees from Arab countries were absorbed into Israel, nearly five million descendants of Arab refugees from the 1948 war continue to languish in 59 United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) “temporary” refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and Gaza, now funded to the tune of 1.2 billion dollars per annum by 38 western democracies, with the US government donating 25 percent of the annual UNRWA budget.

An official UNRWA report, published in June 2011, describes the destitute situation in the UNRWA facilities,which UNRWA officials contrasted with the tremendous economic growth of neighboring Arab cities of Ramallah, Jenin, Bethlehem, Hebron and more.

YET DESPITE its plague of poverty, UNRWA makes no effort to seek any long term solutions for descendants of Arab refugees who have wallowed in the indignity of refugee life for more than 60 years. UNRWA could adapt the principles of UNHCR, the United Nations High Commission For Refugees, to rehabilitate thousands of its clients. After all, UNHCR has recently gained experience in its efforts to relocate thousands of Arab refugees whom it had rescued in Iraq, placing them in eleven nations around the world beginning with Chile.

In contrast, UNRWA instills millions of Arab refugee descendants with the false hope that they will be repatriated to their 1948 villages, even though these villages no longer exist. Meanwhile, UNRWA makes no effort to even encourage Arab refugee descendants to plan for a future Palestinian Arab entity that may soon be established in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

Instead, UNRWA embraces the “right of return” curricula of the Palestinian Authority, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, and UNRWA facilities boast maps of Palestine which replace Israel, where all Israeli cities are described as Arab cities. This past summer, our agency filmed UNRWA sports camps for children where the dominant theme was the “right of return” to the villages of their greatgrandparents.

The UNRWA school system’s call to join the armed struggle to realize the “right of return” has transformed UNRWA camps into a breeding ground for terrorists.

It was therefore no coincidence that, in March 2009, Hamas terror groups won their fourth consecutive election to take charge of the UNRWA trade union and the UNRWA teachers’ union in Gaza.

Appearing before the National Press Club in Washington on September 19, 2011, Dr. Mordechai Kedar, senior research associate at the Begin Sadat Center (BESA) for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University, described UNRWA as “an anachronistic institution born 60 years [ago] and [which] should have died a natural death many decades ago, like in all parts of the world after the tumult of the Second World War.” Moreover, said Kedar, “what UNRWA does is to perpetuate the wars of the 1940s as it resuscitates refugee problems that died in all other parts of the world, more than fifty years ago.”

In conclusion, Kedar addressed the contrast between UNRWA’s motto, which is “peace begins here” and UNRWA’s policies, which he said work against the cause of peace between Israel and its neighbors.

In short, noted Kedar, “UNRWA raises Arab expectations to radically change Israeli demography – expectations that will never be fulfilled. UNRWA wastes funds that could be used much [more] productively, funds which the world – especially the American taxpayer – could have used in a more productive way.”

The writer is the author of Where Has All the Flour Gone: Whims and Waste of UN Palestinian Arab Refugee Policy and the director of The Center for Near East Policy Research.

The Building You’re Buying the U.N.

BRETT D. SCHAEFER @NationalReview

With little attention from national media or Congress, the pieces are falling into place for the United Nations to build a brand-new building next door to its current 39-story tower. That’s fast work, considering the U.N. has yet to provide the Obama administration or Congress an official cost estimate for the project or a detailed justification of the need for this building.

Thus far, the action has been concentrated in New York. Earlier this summer, both houses of the state legislature approved a bill authorizing New York City to “sell, lease or otherwise transfer such land and interests therein to the United Nations development corporation” as are needed for the construction of a new office building on the Robert Moses Playground just south of the current U.N. building. Governor Cuomo signed the legislation on July 15. The legislation stipulates that a memorandum of understanding (MOU) must be completed and signed by the mayor of New York City, the temporary president of the senate, and the speaker of the assembly by October 10, or the legislative authorization will expire.

New York politicians and the U.N. have been working to overcome resistance from some local residents who strongly oppose the deal. In fact, the U.N. Foundation has hired a public-relations firm, Berlin Rosen, to gin up local support for the project. David Cantor of Berlin Rosen is the spokesman for the Friends of the East River Greenway, a “grassroots” groupspecifically created to advocate the project.

New York state-assembly speaker Sheldon Silver, one of the three individuals who must sign off on the MOU, and state senator Liz Krueger, who represents the 26th New York Senate district, where the Robert Moses Playground is located, are also represented by Berlin Rosen.

Once the MOU is complete, New York will enter into formal negotiations with the U.N. to sell the playground. Local politicians have presented the project as a financial windfall for the city. The New York Times quotes state senator Liz Kreuger as saying, “It is a very rare occasion where I would ever find myself supporting the alienation of open space in my district. But we think mathematically this is a win. It helps New York City make good on its commitment to a green ring around Manhattan. We’re in bad economic times. I just don’t see any money appearing on the horizon for something like this.”

Indeed, New York expects to make $200 million to $400 million from the deal. Much of that would be used to fill in the largest remaining gap in the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway, from 38th to 60th Streets on the East River. The greenway is considered a legacy project by Mayor Bloomberg.

Woohoo — free money from the United Nations, right? Not exactly. Remember, the U.S. taxpayer pays 22 percent of the U.N. budget.

Earlier this decade, construction of a new U.N. building was estimated to run about $400 million. And New York wants $65 million for the playground property. Add those two figures for a lowball estimate. The cost could go much higher, however. After all, the current renovation of the U.N. building was initially estimated at $600 million. It’s now expected to wind up costing more than $2 billion.

The U.S. taxpayer will likely be expected to shoulder 22 percent of the increased expenses resulting from the new U.N. building. This works out to just over $100 million under the lowball estimate, but could easily be three or even four times that amount. And it should surprise no one if we’re also asked to assume sole fiscal responsibility for security upgrades related to the new building. After all, as we saw in 2010, the U.S. was expected to pay for $100 million in security-related expenses — above and beyond our regular “fair share” contribution for the renovation project.

What New York is really proposing, then, is for American taxpayers from around the country to pay hundreds of millions of dollars so that Manhattan’s bikers and hikers can have a scenic pathway along the East River. If the citizens of New York won’t pony up for their own esplanade, why should taxpayers in Ohio or Nevada or Florida or anywhere else? This may be a “win” for New York and the U.N., but it certainly makes the rest of America look like a loser.

Thus far, the Obama administration has stayed mute on this issue. It should speak up and oppose this project before things progress too far and the American taxpayer is stuck with another extravagant bill. In a time of fiscal austerity, neither the administration nor Congress should silently assent to this unnecessary increase in America’s contributions to the U.N.

— Brett D. Schaefer is the Kingham Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs at the Heritage Foundation.

U.S. Taxes and the United Nations Money Pit

by Claudia Rosett @ PajamasMedia.Com

Whether you love or hate the United Nations, one thing all Americans ought to be able to agree on is that sloshing billions of American tax dollars into the UN, with little accountability and regardless of UN performance, is a chump’s game. I’d even suggest it is no favor at all to the UN itself — corroding its incentives for decent behavior, and swaddling its staff and offices in plush sinecures that are increasingly catching the attention of financially strapped American taxpayers, who pick up the biggest share of the UN tab.

Yet the chief effort currently on the table to reform the UN — Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s “United Nations Transparency, Accountability and Reform Act of 2011″ — is playing in Washington as an utterly partisan issue. There are so far 98 co-sponsors for this bill, and not a single Democrat among them.

Why’s that? The Hill reports that according to Ros-Lehtinen, the Obama administration is telling Democrats to stay away from her bill. The bill seeks to clean up the UN by revamping some of its financial incentives — basically proposing to condition a substantial share of U.S. money on UN performance. This would include potentially withholding some of the assessed dues with which the UN General Assembly bankrolls its self-approved and ever-expanding budgets, for which the U.S. dutifully pays 22%. The administration’s argument against this approach takes the line that if America stops automatically dispensing money at the UN’s demand, it would reduce U.S. influence and ability to reform the UN.

By that argument, America’s clout at the UN consists chiefly of bribery. And there are a great many signs at the UN that such bribery has long ago been absorbed into the system not as an an exceptionally generous contribution by the host state, for which the other 192 are grateful. Rather, America’s out-sized dues are viewed by the UN’s other member states, and many on its staff, as an entitlement.

Maybe the administration should take a closer look at some of the facts now being unearthed by its own envoy for UN management and reform, Joseph Torsella. I don’t mean to suggest that Torsella is at odds with his boss — if anything, he seems to be trying to walk the impossible line of promoting reform by reconciling the administration’s give-’em-the-money theory with the UN’s gimme!-gimme! realities. But to Torsella’s credit, in his efforts to persuade the UN to behave, he has been digging up a lot of information that suggests there are excellent reasons for withholding money from the UN.

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.

(Homepage thumbnail based partially upon modified image from Shutterstock.com.)