[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 78 (Tuesday, June 14, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H4407-H4408]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         UNITED NATIONS REFORM

  (Mr. DeLAY asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, Thursday on the floor the House will take up 
the United Nations Reform Act of 2005. This is a comprehensive, indeed 
almost exhaustive, reform package aimed at the longstanding 
inefficiencies, inadequacies, and abuses at the U.N.
  For all the frustration many Americans feel about the United Nations, 
the U.N., for all its faults, it remains the most established and 
immediately available forum for resolving international disputes and 
developing international consensus on a wide range of issues.
  That said, most of the stated aims of the U.N.'s bureaucracy, to say 
nothing of the lofty ideal of its charter, have been undermined and in 
many cases brazenly contradicted by decades of waste, fraud, and abuse.
  In the wake of the massive Oil-for-Food scandal still ripping through 
the U.N.'s headquarters, the American people, who currently provide 22 
percent of the U.N.'s budget, can no longer trust that their dues 
payments are being responsibly spent.
  The U.N., for all its strengths, should not be blindly trusted.
  The clarity and transparency that defines democratic governments and 
institutions is nowhere to be seen in the U.N.'s financial management, 
or for that matter its human rights commission, its peculiar dislike 
for the State of Israel, its docile attitude towards the oppressive 
regimes, its hand-wringing and indecisiveness in times of crisis, and 
its anti-American policymaking apparatus.
  The reform bill we will take up this week, the product of intense 
work by International Relations Chairman Henry Hyde will start to 
address these and other institutional shortcomings at the United 
Nations.
  It would, most importantly, call for weighted voting on budgetary 
matters,

[[Page H4408]]

so that in the future the United States has more say in the U.N.'s 
budget than the representatives of Syria.
  It would make the funding of certain inefficient programs voluntary, 
so that contributing nations will get more verifiable value for their 
contributions.
  It would also finally cut back on the U.N.'s lavish international 
conference budget, which, hard as it is to believe, comprises the 
single largest section of the U.N.'s budget.
  In addition, the Hyde bill will put in place human rights 
requirements that nations must meet before they may have a say in the 
U.N.'s human rights organizations.
  On and on the list of reforms goes, all of which will be enforced by 
the promise in the Hyde bill that the U.N.'s failure to reform will 
trigger a withholding of 50 percent of the United States dues.
  These necessary reforms and the necessary stick behind them are long 
overdue, Mr. Speaker, and may finally help create the United Nations 
the world has needed all along.

                          ____________________