GOP resists Democrats’ push for more UN funding despite China’s growing influence – By Rachel Oswald (Roll Call) / July 11, 2022
Republicans concerned about ‘misplaced funding priorities,’ Rep. Harold Rogers says
U.S. lawmakers are working in an unusually bipartisan manner to boost federal funding across the government’s spate of defense, technology and international development programs — all in the name of pushing back against long-term strategic security threats emanating from China.
But there is one notable exception: increasing financial support to the United Nations.
“Right now, at the U.N., to paraphrase President Biden, we’re in a fight for the soul of the world. It would be a grave mistake to cede the U.N. and other multilateral fora to China, which is why the president’s budgets ask for the resources and authorities needed to assert U.S. leadership,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said in June at a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing on the administration’s fiscal 2023 spending request for the U.N.
House Republicans have strenuously protested House Democrats’ inclusion of nearly $4.7 billion in multilateral assistance in their version of next year’s foreign aid bill, which the Appropriations Committee sent to the floor in a party-line vote in late June. That represents a $2.3 billion increase over this fiscal year’s base funding levels to support international financial institutions — including a proposed $1.6 billion contribution to the Green Climate Fund — and to international organizations such as the United Nations and its constituent agencies, like the World Health Organization.
