[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 12913]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              U.N. REFORM

  (Mrs. BLACKBURN asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, today we will debate the U.N. Reform 
Act, and I want to thank the gentleman from Illinois (Chairman Hyde) 
for making this a priority. We are trying to bring change to an 
organization that has grown fat, happy, and arrogant off of American 
taxpayer dollars.
  Over the past several years, we have watched the oil-for-food 
scandal, and numerous scandals listed here on this poster, accounting 
errors, and then on top of this, in 2005, the U.N. asked for a $400 
million budget increase.
  Countries like Libya, Sudan, and Cuba are on the U.N. Human Rights 
Commission, and we, the taxpayers, are paying for this.
  The United States sends more than $400 million a year to the U.N. We 
spend billions of dollars in direct aid and military aid, and no one 
can say we are not doing our fair share. Requiring the U.N. to try and 
find spending priorities is clearly not a bad thing; it is a good 
thing. Neither is asking them to cut spending. If they are not using 
our money wisely, we should not be sending as much.
  Mr. Speaker, I hope the House will overwhelmingly support this 
important and overdue legislation.

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