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Joe "the plumber" Torsella gives hell to United Nations: calls for reality check in all UN budgets

Former USUN Amb. John Bolton one said: "If the UN lost 10 Floors it wouldn't make a bit of difference".

Yesterday at the first ever televised 5th committee meeting, the current USUN Amb. Joe "the plumber" Torsella, showed that Bolton aint got nothing on him.

These are some of the budget statements made by USUN's Joe "the plumber" :

But as we review this budget we also see, as I said here last month, that while the Secretary-General has led, not enough of the rest of us—both within the Organization and among the Member States—have followed. The innovations I just described have enabled the publishing section of DGACM to propose a reduction in its work force by 41 posts, for example; yet, the Organization as a whole is shrinking by just 44 net posts, a reduction of only four-tenths of one percent. And while we here debate that 0.4 percent, potential add-ons to this budget—both those that we know today, and those yet to be considered—mean that the Secretary-General’s commendable call for budget restraint could, if we are not disciplined and careful in our work here in this Committee, end in a budget that actually increases from the last biennial budget.

Our first and most urgent task is to set the United Nations on the path of real fiscal discipline in the 2012-13 budget. That means passing a budget with substantial and sustainable reductions. It means judging whether we’ve achieved real savings by using as our benchmark not a budget outline, but the expenses we approved during the previous period, the 2010-11 bienium. It means measuring all expenditures, including add-ons, in our definition of expenses for the 2012-13 period. And it means achieving savings that will recur, savings the ACABQ would call “significant and structural”.

Many Member States, governments, businesses and NGOs have implemented total or partial hiring freezes on vacancies resulting from attrition, and in these difficult times the United Nations should do the same. Moreover, posts that have been persistently vacant over long periods should be abolished. The disturbing trend toward upward re-classification of posts identified by ACABQ should be reversed: the budget before us proposes upward reclassification of 55 posts—more than double the 27 reclassifications contained in the proposed program budgets for the past three biennia combined. Few of these reclassifications should be approved. Furthermore, we call on the Secretariat to comprehensively review all current employee benefit programs and costs, including health care, pension, leave, and travel policies.

Our second task is to ensure that the budget we pass is in fact a binding budget, and prevents the United Nations from spending more than we actually approve this fall. We continue to be disappointed and concerned that every year Member States are presented a significant number of add-ons at considerable cost that in some cases are not mandated, in many cases can be foreseen, and in all cases should be better managed. Budgets are not suggestions. The United Nations must strictly adhere to the principles reflected in resolutions 41/213 and 42/211 that call for new proposals to be "budget neutral" or offset with savings within the approved budget. And we, as Member States, must ensure that the Secretary-General has the tools to enforce these policies.

We also continue to be concerned that the large additions to budget requests stemming from “re-costing.” While we recognize the organization needs some ability to protect itself from inflation and currency fluctuations, there are better ways to achieve that protection than passing a budget with blanks instead of numbers and regularly adding new funds to it. We continue to seek further details and analysis from the Secretariat—as soon as possible—on options, such as currency hedging, to deal with this issue. We should leave here with the confidence that we’ve approved a final budget, not a first draft.

As the United States has said before, the United Nations’s budget is too complex and opaque, and it is built around the wrong measures. Paradoxically, there is too much data, and too little useful information. Readers of United Nations budget documents, for example, will search in vain for the actual travel budget by department or the cost of employee healthcare. But they can easily find the precise number of policy papers issued by any number of the executive committees, as if the number of papers itself is a meaningful measure of accomplishment.

The budget in its current form of 37 different and partitioned sections would tie the hands of the best manager in the world. Our job is to set priorities, not to needlessly constrain the Secretary-General’s ability to operationally adapt, as changing circumstances and changing times demand, to meet the goals we set. If we are demanding more accountability for results from United Nations managers—as we should—we should also give them more flexibility to redeploy some resources within and among budget sections.

And finally, we need to reexamine how managers build the United Nations budget in the first place. It is striking that each budget begins with the prior budget’s appropriation. We are caught in a perpetual exercise of adding to the previous biennium’s budget appropriation with the assumption that all previous mandates should be met in the same way and at the same funding level and every new mandate requires new resources. This premise is flawed. The fundamental reality is that resources do not equal results. No organization can work effectively without prioritizing to bridge the gap between limited resources on the one hand and ambitious goals on the other. That’s a conversation held daily in most governments, businesses and families; it should be held more frequently here at the United Nations and in the Fifth Committee.

Three tasks. A 2012-13 budget that represents a significant and sustainable belt-tightening from 2010-2011. A 2012-13 budget that is in fact final, comprehensive, and stable for the full biennium. And reform of the budget process this year so that United Nations budgets in future years will be prepared, presented and debated very differently. If we do those three things, Mr. Chairman, we will indeed have seized this opportunity.

Even if all the above would have been a "orchestrated rhetoric" to slow down the US Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and US House Republicans in the Committee on Foreign Affairs to pass a substantial budget cut on US fundings for the United Nations, the cat is out of the bag and won't be easy to put it back. Torsella has gone where no other US Ambassador has even dared before, and now the scrutiny of UN's budget will only increase and make the tenure of Ban Ki-moon's second term a living hell.

Bloomberg.com: Republican Bill to Force Major Changes at the UN

Click here to read this story on Bloomberg.com

House Republicans introduced legislation today that seeks to force major changes at the United Nations, using as leverage the threat to withhold some of the U.S.’s 22 percent contribution to the world body’s operating budget.

The bill by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Republican chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, would demand that the UN let countries decide how much to pay and which programs they will support, rather than assessing payments based on a formula. It would end funding for Palestinian refugees, limit use of U.S. funds to only purposes outlined by Congress and put a hold on creating or expanding peacekeeping operations until management changes are made.

“We need a UN which will advance the noble goals for which it was founded,” Ros-Lehtinen of Florida said in a statement. “The current UN continues to be plagued by scandal, mismanagement and inaction, and its agenda is frequently hijacked by rogue regimes which protect each other while targeting free democracies like the U.S. and Israel.”

Republicans are moving against the world body at a time when the Obama administration is increasingly building its foreign policy around multilateral institutions, such as the alliance-based approach on Libya.

The bill, which has 57 co-sponsors who are all Republicans, may advance in the Republican-controlled House. It is likely to face opposition in the Senate and from President Barack Obama.

Administration Opposition

“We oppose this legislation,” said Victoria Nuland, a State Department spokeswoman, at a press briefing today. She said the measure would cut by half U.S. funding for the U.N and “dangerously weaken the UN.”

“We believe in UN reform,” she said. “We just don’t think this is the right way to go about it.”

The U.S. pays 22 percent of the UN’s regular operations budget and is assessed 27 percent of the peacekeeping budget. U.S. payments totaled $3.35 billion in 2010, of which $2.67 billion was dedicated to the 16 peacekeeping operations worldwide, from South Sudan to Haiti.

“After two years of the closest and most productive cooperation in decades at the UN betweenWashington and the rest of the international community, it is hard to understand why Republicans in the House of Representatives are determined to poison the well,” Jeffrey Laurenti, a UN analyst at the Century Foundation, a New York-based research group, wrote in a blog post yesterday.

International Cooperation

Laurenti cites UN support for the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, the world body’s move to authorize limited military action in Libya at U.S. urging and its successful work in handing power over to the legitimate winner of Ivory Coast’s presidential election.

Brett Schaefer, a UN analyst at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation that supports many Republican initiatives, said that Ros-Lehtinen’s goals dovetail with the administration’s interests in seeing more UN accountability, improvements in peacekeeping and an end to policies that single out Israel for criticism.

“The real point of divergence is how do you achieve these policy goals,” Schaeffer said in a telephone interview.

Representative Howard Berman, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the bill would hurt Israel and undermine U.S. leadership.

“At a time when efforts to isolate and delegitimize Israel in the General Assembly and elsewhere are gaining steam, I can’t see how a bill that will undoubtedly weaken our influence at the UN and make it harder to counter Palestinian attempts to unilaterally declare statehood is inJerusalem’s interest, let alone our own,” Berman said in a statement.

Percentage of Contribution

If passed into law, Ros-Lehtinen’s bill would have the U.S. withhold a percentage of its contributions until at least 80 percent of the UN budget was voluntary.

The legislation also would limit the use of U.S. contributions to only the specific purposes outlined by Congress and would withhold U.S. funding for any UN agency that upgrades the status of the Palestinian observer mission or any agency that helps Palestinian refugees.

The bill would also withhold funding for the UN Human Rights Council until the State Department can certify that it doesn’t include members subject to Security Council sanctions, under Security Council-mandated investigations for human rights abuses or are state sponsors of terrorism.

Last month, Ros-Lehtinen’s committee approved an authorization bill that would cut by almost 10 percent U.S. funding for peacekeeping operations, which are assessed based on each member nation’s relative share of the global economy.

Peacekeeping Bills

U.S. law limits the peacekeeping funding to 25 percent of the cost of operations, but Congress has given an annual waiver to permit payment of the full 27 percent assessment for peacekeeping. Ros-Lehtinen wants to bring that amount down, in line with the law, the House aide said.

Ros-Lehtinen’s bill would direct the president to have his UN ambassador use the U.S. veto power in the Security Council to block the creation of new peacekeeping operations or the expansion of existing ones until reforms are made.

Groups that promote strong U.S.-UN relations, such as the Washington-based Better World Initiative, said the bill would undermine U.S. influence at the UN.

“We are hard-pressed to find a moment in history where the UN has had a greater role in promoting American interests,” said Executive Director Peter Yeo in an e-mail. The bill would “severely erode America’s leadership role at the United Nations and undermine our nation’s security.”

Tensions between the UN and the U.S. over management and funding are not new. A push for improvements in UN management came during the administration of President Bill Clinton, who signed the Helms-Biden United Nations Reform Act of 1999. It tied U.S. payments to specified steps to improve management.

In 2006, President George W. Bush’s ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, said the U.S. might push to make contributions to the UN budget voluntary, as Ros-Lehtinen is doing.

To contact the reporters on this story: Nicole Gaouette in Washington atngaouette@bloomberg.net; Bill Varner in New York at wvarner@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net

On Deck: Why I May Run for President

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THIS ON HUMAN EVENTS


Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations that “the first duty of the sovereign, that of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies, can be performed only by means of a military force.” Today, failing to protect our national security inevitably endangers our economic prosperity by making us vulnerable to global adversaries.

It is clear that President Obama does not agree with Smith’s wisdom. Obama’s policies are jeopardizing not only our national security and economy, but our constitutional sovereignty too.

That is why I have been considering running for President. The Republican Party must nominate a leader who, unlike Obama, understands instinctively that America’s liberty, prosperity and national security are inextricably linked.

Sadly, last week’s debt-ceiling legislation, potentially resulting in catastrophic cuts to our defense budget, only reinforces my deep concerns. This may have been the best we could get, and it is far better than we feared. But the deal risks massive defense cutbacks, potentially pointing a dagger at the heart of our security and sovereignty.

We now face a minimum of $700 to 800 billion more in defense cuts, in addition to the $400 billion Obama has already imposed, with potentially catastrophic consequences. The joint committee established to fashion the second tranche of spending cuts (or tax increases) is not likely to protect us from massive defense cuts. The liberals will be working feverishly to put conservatives on the committee in an untenable position: a Hobson’s choice between tax increases and deep cuts in defense spending.

The debt-ceiling legislation’s trigger mechanism, with its grave risk of disproportionate cuts in defense spending, is potentially even more draconian. America’s national security is not just another wasteful government program, especially in perilous times like today. We are heavily involved in two major conflicts, the long-term global War on Terror and the critical effort to prevent the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Recent confirmation that Iran, on the verge of becoming a nuclear power, is materially aiding al-Qaeda only underlines the risk of massive U.S. defense cuts.

President Obama, unlike all his predecessors since Franklin Roosevelt, does not treat national security as his top priority. He does not see the world as threatening to U.S. interests. And he is comfortable with America’s “inevitable” decline in the world, rather than being determined to prevent it. Obama is our first post-American President. He fancies himself to be above mere “patriotism.” He is less an advocate for American interests than a “citizen of the world,” in his own phrase.

For two-and-a-half years, Americans have witnessed the devastating results of Obama’s “post-American” worldview. Russia has taken advantage of his naïve “reset” policy, while Iran and North Korea continue to aggressively pursue nuclear weapons. Staunch allies such as the Czech Republic, Poland and Japan question our resolve. Even France thinks he lacks leadership. China and the International Monetary Fund now openly cast doubt on the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. And Obama’s policy toward Libya has been an abject failure to date. He entered the conflict for the wrong reasons, failed to allow our military to accomplish its mission, invited Russia in to mediate, and now seems content to allow Muammar Gaddafi to remain in Libya. An Obama adviser called his approach “leading from behind.” Indeed it is, but it is not the American way.

Israel Victimized

No ally has been more victimized by Obama’s worldview than Israel. As our most anti-Israel President, bar none, Obama fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the security threats to Israel and the United States in the Middle East. Iran’s support for terrorism and pursuit of nuclear weapons goes unanswered. Radical groups around the region have been emboldened in the face of sustained incoherence in U.S. policy. In addition to Israel, Arab friends in the region, especially those producing oil and gas critical to the international economy, are shocked at the Obama administration’s treatment of close friends and its inability to comprehend, let alone defend, core American interests.

In addition, Obama is enamored of European-style schemes for global governance. He has naïvely called for a world in which America voluntarily gives up its nuclear weapons in hopes that our adversaries do so too. He yearns to join the International Criminal Court and risks subjecting America’s warriors to prosecutions and trial.Unable to achieve national gun-control legislation at home, he is seeking a backdoor route through an “arms trade treaty” now under negotiation at the United Nations. Despite his pro forma denials, Obama fundamentally does not believe in American exceptionalism, nor that American strength has ensured our peace and security since World War II.

Americans should understand that Obama’s international policies have a direct and profound impact on our economic prosperity. One obvious example is the devastating impact of another terrorist attack here at home, especially one with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Instability abroad has a profound impact on oil and gas supplies, and therefore the price we pay to fill up the family car with gasoline. Global supply chains vital to America’s jobs are threatened when our Navy is unable to protect U.S. shipping and vital sea lanes. Our failed border security policy allows the violence of drug cartels to spill across our borders and endanger our families. Obama’s existing cuts in our defense budget, and the ones surely coming under the debt-ceiling bill, will only magnify our inability to protect ourselves.

No GOP Candidate So Far

In 16 months, Americans will again go to the polls and vote for the person they believe can best lead our country. Beyond question, Obama’s economic policies have failed to renew the economy and are now a principal reason the recovery is stalled. His national security policies are even more dangerous. The American dream is under assault, and Obama is not fighting back. We need a real President in the Oval Office, someone who knows instinctively and by experience that, as Adam Smith said, “the first duty of the sovereign” is to protect and promote American sovereignty and national security. Otherwise, economic prosperity will count for little.

To date, in my view, no Republican candidate has persuasively argued that our economic recovery and long-term prosperity are completely intertwined with a strong national security posture. If no one else is prepared to make that case, I will.

[This story was originally published as the cover story for August 8th issue of Human Events newspaper.]

EXCLUSIVE: As Security Council Demands End to Syria Violence, U.N. Positions Itself for Assad 'Reforms'

By George Russell

Published August 04, 2011 | FoxNews.com (Click here for story on FoxNews)

Even as the United Nations Security Councildemands that the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad cease its campaign of killing civilian protesters, the U.N. bureaucracy is extending its assistance to Syria through 2012 in the hope Assad’s vague promises of political reform and “national dialogue” will eventually prove to be real.

According to a document obtained by Fox News, the full spectrum of United Nations assistance programs in Syria have been extended through next year, “in order to ensure that reforms initiated by the government of the Syrian Arab Republic in 2011 are reflected in the new programs of cooperation of the United Nations agencies” that are slated to succeed them.

The revelation is contained in a UNICEF document dated July 22, 2011 -- in the midst of the latest wave of harsh Syrian repression -- and intended for the next meeting of UNICEF’s 36-nation executive board, in mid-September.

The document notifies the board of the extension, not only of UNICEF’s programs in Syria, but of a wide variety of other U.N. programs. It also informs the board that approval of UNICEF’s portion of the extension has already been granted by the agency’s executive director, Anthony Lake.

A copy of the document appeared on the executive board’s public website shortly after Fox News began asking questions about it.

The existence of the document underlines the dual-track tightrope the U.N. continues to walk in Syria, where it continues to engage the Assad regime with the carrots of humanitarian aid and assistance in modernizing its creaking and corrupt social welfare structure, while relying on international condemnation and targeted economic sanctions to restrain Assad’s brutal crackdown against demonstrators who want more fundamental change.

So far, an estimated 1,750 people have been killed by the regime as it tries to quell political protests, and scores more may be dead in an ongoing Syrian tank assault on the center of the insurgent city of Hamas.

A spokesman for U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told Fox News that he “was not involved” in the deliberations that led to the U.N. program renewals, though he has been deeply embroiled in efforts to make the Syrian regime end the repression and embark on a reform agenda. The spokesman referred other questions about the U.N.’s Syria programs to the agencies involved.

“The Secretary General has repeated called for reforms in Syria,” the spokesman declared. Ban did so again yesterday, following a Security Council statement -- less forceful than a full-scale resolution -- condemning a new wave of regime violence that began to crest last weekend.

He condemned the “brutally shocking” events in Syria and declared that “the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people must be addressed through an inclusive Syrian-led political process that guarantees fundamental freedoms and rights for all.”

Most U.N. programs in Syria are slated to expire at the end of 2011, in line with a government five-year planning cycle, and replaced with a new series of development and humanitarian efforts. As the Assad crackdown has expanded, the U.S. and other Western governments have imposed selective economic sanctions to make the regime end its repressive tactics.

The new document obtained by Fox News specifically mentions the programs of UNICEF, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and a mixed bag of development assistance programs known as the U.N. Development Assistance Framework, or UNDAF, as continuing on an interim basis.

Click here to read the document.

The quiet renewal of the UNDAF programs, at a time when Western nations were tightening economic sanctions on the Assad regime in protest over the repression, was first reported by Fox News last month.

UNFPA’s extension of its Syria program was contained in documents Fox News obtained at that time. UNICEF declined to respond to questions from Fox News about its executive board document.

A UNDP spokesman confirmed the program renewal “to avoid operational vacuum,” while future programming was deferred to ensure that it “best meet the evolving needs of the Syrian people.”

The spokesman took issue with the “presumption” that UNDP’s future programming “was deferred to reflect reforms initiated by the Syrian government,” which he termed “incorrect.”

“UNDP is not examining current reforms with a view to incorporate them in any program,” he said. “Nor are we working with the government on their reform plans.”

Reform in Syria has mainly consisted of little more than vague speech-making by Assad and his top officials, coupled with attacks by security forces that are ongoing. And in the wake of yesterday’s Security Council statement, Assad showed that the game of promised reform and actual repression was still on.

The regime today issued a presidential decree authorizing a multi-party system in the one-party Ba’athist state, and a new elections law ostensibly giving candidates the right to oversee balloting. Both were dismissed as meaningless while the repression continued.

"It is incredible to see UN agencies referring to 'reforms initiated' by the Syrian government in 2011,” commented Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and a deputy national security adviser for the region during the Bush administration. “The only actions the Assad regime has actually initiated this year have been aimed at killing unarmed civilians and crushing demands for freedom.”

Abrams has publicly advocated greater U.S. pressure to oust Assad entirely.

“U.S. policy should be that all U.N. activity in Syria cease, except for purely humanitarian programs carried out in entirely non-political terms,” added former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton, who is a Fox News contributor. “Continued, visible U.N. cooperation with the Assad regime strengthens Assad and delegitimizes the U.N.”

But waving the reform flag while crushing his opposition has proved effective for Assad. In May, President Obama declared that Assad “has a choice.” He could lead a transition to greater democracy “or get out of the way.”

Yesterday, the Security Council took note of “the announced commitments by the Syrian authorities to reform,” regretted “the lack of progress in implementation,” and called upon the regime to "implement its commitments.”

So far, Assad appears to be doing nothing to make that happen.

George Russell is executive editor of Fox News and can be found on Twitter @GeorgeRussell.