By Thomas P. Kilgannon Guest Commentary
TAX DAY IS APPROACHING AND THOSE of you who still owe Uncle Sam money had better send it in. That’s because the free-spending Bush administration has teamed up with the pork dispensers on Capitol Hill to send more of our money to the corrupt regime at the United Nations.
The U.N. is embarking on a multi-billion construction project and the timing could not be better for those who like to waste taxpayer dollars. Liberals have taken over the Appropriations Committees on Capitol Hill, and John Bolton — the most effective U.N. watchdog ever — is out of the picture. In addition, the U.N.’s top fiscal office, which used to be managed by a qualified American, is now being run by a Mexican biologist with no financial management experience.
The project is the renovation of the United Nations headquarters in New York City — a metaphor for the U.N. itself. It is outdated, falling apart and no longer useful. It has never had a major renovation, is full of asbestos and is energy inefficient. And while it won’t pass a fire inspection, it is one of the only buildings in New York where smokers are still allowed to light up.
The architecturally compassionate thing to do would be to introduce the building to a wrecking ball and have Ban Ki-moon secure office space in a strip mall in Senegal. Instead, the U.N. plans a major renovation with U.S. taxpayers footing most of the ballooning bill. At a time when U.S. officials should be debating the utility of the United Nations, they are helping it build a cathedral of anti-Americanism.
In 2003, two New York-based construction managers presented the United Nations with renovation blueprints — the Capital Master Plan (CMP) — which would cost $953 million. Engineering, planning and consulting firms were then hired by the U.N. for additional advice (and paid $7.8 million) only to provide an estimate that then amounted to $1.2 billion. Satisfied with the higher amount, then-Secretary General Kofi Annan presented an invoice for the full amount to the Bush administration.
Not wanting to offend any of the 191 other countries that make up the General Assembly, the State Department offered the U.N. the full amount by structuring a 30-year loan with a modest 5.5-percent interest rate. Foggy Bottom’s financial whiz kids must have actually believed the taxpayers would see that money again. But Annan, so offended that interest payments were tacked on, rejected the deal even though no other nation offered as much as coffee and donuts for the construction crew.
Three years later, the cost of refurbishing the U.N. now stands at $1.9 billion — double the original estimate. In the last three years alone, the cost has escalated almost $20 million per month. In 2005, New York developer Donald Trump offered to complete the project for one third of what it will now cost. Annan refused to discuss the matter with Trump.
With the price tag spiraling out of control, the U.N. has cooked up a scheme whereby member countries will add the construction cost to their annual “assessments.” As the largest U.N. contributor, the United States will not only pay 22 percent of the regular U.N. budget, and 25 percent of all peacekeeping costs, we now get to pay 22 percent of the $1.9 billion construction project (or $413.6 million).
By contrast, China, with whom we have a $232 billion trade deficit, will pay only $38.6 million to the U.N. reconstruction. Iran will only have to pony up $2.9 million for the U.N. headquarters, since its cash is needed for its nuclear weapons program. Finally, Sudan, which prefers to apply its resources to its on-going genocide, will help defray a whopping $150,000 of the U.N.’s $2 billion project.
If you think U.S. costs will be capped at that amount, guess again. In December, the General Assembly adopted a resolution requiring that in the “unlikely event” that “the cost will exceed the approved budget,” member countries will be “subject to a further assessment.” Nor will U.S. tax dollars benefit American workers or firms. The General Assembly decreed that the work will be done by “vendors from developing countries and countries with economies in transition.”
Last year, Senators Tom Coburn, Jeff Sessions and James Inhofe expressed concern to the Secretary of State about what they deemed an “ill-managed project.”That’s putting it politely. What Congress is doing is giving the United Nations $413 million to build the Great Hall of American Hatred.
THOMAS P. KILGANNON is the president of Freedom Alliance and the author of “Diplomatic Divorce: Why America Should End Its Love Affair With the United Nations.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 20, 2007. Read the original PDF.