The White House is seeking to cut $1 billion in funding for U.N. peacekeeping operations and to eliminate hundreds of millions of dollars for other U.N. programs that care for needy children and seek to lift the world’s poorest out of a life of grinding poverty, according to two diplomatic sources briefed on the plan.
The proposal is certain to face strong pushback from Democratic and Republican congressional leaders, who warned that President Donald Trump’s budget will never be passed. But it reflected the White House’s clear desire to jettison America’s traditional role as the champion of the downtrodden and embrace that of a military powerhouse to be feared.
The White House budget office informed State Department officials this week that the administration plans to eliminate all U.S. funding to the $326 million International Organizations and Programs account, which provides more than $130 million to UNICEF — a sizable chunk of the more than $500 million the United States contributed to the U.N. agency in 2016 — and around $70 million to the U.N. Development Programme.
They were also told to brace for a 40 percent cut to the State Department’s U.N. peacekeeping budget. The United States contributed more than $2 billion to the U.N.’s $8 billion-plus peacekeeping budget last year.
I guess Trump is trying to save money to cover the costs of around the clock Secret Service protection for his family and repeated trips to Mar-a-Lago.
What are the lives of a bunch of people who are clearly not Americans in comparison to that?
It is so hard to type while I keep having to face palm in shame.
Source http://ift.tt/2n4BH4i
