[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 128 (Tuesday, September 23, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Page S9755]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            U.N. ARREARAGES

  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I understand we are in the middle of debate 
on FDA which has been going on for some days. I did want to talk 
briefly about the President's comments in New York yesterday relative 
to the United Nations.
  The President went to the U.N. General Assembly and made a very 
eloquent speech, as he often does, in which he promised that he would 
be paying what is represented to be the arrears of the people of the 
United States that we owe to the United Nations, arrears which is 
somewhere around $1 billion. I think that was generous of the President 
to do that. But he should have made it much clearer what the conditions 
are for our paying those arrearages.
  As chairman of the committee that has the authority over the spending 
of the money relative to the U.N. accounts, I have been working with 
Senator Helms and Senator Grams, along with the administration and with 
House Members, and we have developed a package which makes that payment 
to the United Nations conditioned. Unfortunately, the way the President 
expressed it, the conditions were mentioned only in passing, and hardly 
even mentioned at that. But the conditions are critical.
  The American people simply are not going to send another $1 billion 
to the United Nations unless the United Nations cleans up its act--
unless they reduce the patronage; unless they put in place accounting 
procedures that are trackable--so that we when we send $1 there we know 
where it goes.
  Today the American citizens pay 25 cents of every $1 spent at the 
United Nations and the United Nations has no idea where that money is 
spent. Not only do they have no idea where most of that money is 
spent--they may have an idea but they certainly don't know specifically 
where it goes--but, more importantly than that, they don't have any 
systems in place to assess whether or not the money is getting anything 
for the dollars that are being spent.
  What we are seeing is an institution which is rampant with 
mismanagement and inefficiencies. Regrettably, the President didn't 
point that out. He had an excellent opportunity to stand before that 
body and say, ``Listen, if you expect the American taxpayers to pay for 
a quarter of the cost of this institution then the American taxpayers 
expect adequate accounting. And the American taxpayers expect that it 
will be spent on programs that work. And the American taxpayers do not 
want to have their money spent on patronage. And they don't want to 
have it mismanaged, and do not want to have it inefficiently used.''
  The new Secretary General of the United Nations has given a 
significant number of talks on this topic. He has pushed forward an 
agenda for reform. But his agenda for reform doesn't go as far as the 
agreed to package, which passed out of this Senate with an overwhelming 
vote.
  The simple fact is that I have come to the floor today to restate the 
obvious, which is that we are not going to send $1 billion to the 
United Nations until the conditions of that package are met, until we 
know that the dollars are being spent effectively, and until we know 
that there is in place a reform effort which is going to work.
  I regret that the President did not take the opportunity to express 
that thought to the membership of the United Nations. But I think the 
point should be clarified before the people who are expecting to get 
their billion dollars think they have a blank check, because they 
don't. We are not going to tolerate it.
  I yield the time.

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