January 6, 2017 By
URL of the original posting site: http://eheadlines.com/donald-trumps-new-congress-looks-to-stop-funding-un-in-herculean-leap/
The House Freedom Caucus, a group of conservative congressmen, are due to meet next week to decide between two possible proposals for the new law.
From Express
One possible course of action is to reduce United States’ funding of the UN while the other would make
funding voluntary with a mandate that any contributions must be agreed by the House every two years. Congressman for North Carolina Mark Meadows, who chairs the Freedom Caucus, said: “One is an incremental step; the other is really a herculean leap.”
The move follows the UN Security Council unanimously backing a motion calling for the end of Israel building settlements on disputed land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In the past the US has vetoed resolutions it deemed were critical of the Jewish state but the outgoing administration under President Barack Obama made the rare decision not to vote. The resolution was passed by 14 votes to nothing last month.
The diplomatic move was seen as hugely controversial and led to widespread condemnation from both Democrats and Republicans. Mr Meadows stated the decision would help fuel support for the
US to end its commitments to the UN. He said: “Israel is a bipartisan issue so I think that [if the proposal] is measured and appropriate we could pick up a lot of Democrats to support it as well.”
Should the group get their way in Congress this would have a serious impact on the UN as the US contributes almost a quarter – 22 percent – of the UN’s entire funding. The US contributed £480million ($594m) to the UN’s regular budget plus an additional £1.9billion ($2.3bn) to the peacekeeping budget.
The move by the Congress group has also received support from senior Republicans in the Senate. The controversial Ted Cruz, a Texas senator who ran against Mr Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, said he believed efforts to introduce new laws to this effect would take place “very soon”.
Read Full Story At Express
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