December 26, 2017
The New York Times had an article on President Trump’s plans to cut the US contribution to the United Nations. The article told readers:
“Under a formula tied to economic size and other measurements established under an article of the United Nations Charter, the United States is responsible for 22 percent of the United Nations operating budget, the largest contribution. It paid about $1.2 billion of the 2016-2017 budget of $5.4 billion.
“The United States also is the largest single financial contributor, at 28.5 percent, to a separate budget for United Nations peacekeeping operations, which totals $6.8 billion in the 2017-2018 budget finalized in June.”
This might have led readers to believe that the combined total of slightly less than $3.1 billion is a substantial cost to US taxpayers. In fact, it is slightly less than 0.08 percent of projected federal spending in 2018. While the value of this spending can be debated, it will not lead to major savings to the government if it is cut back or even eliminated altogether.
It would have been helpful if the NYT had made some effort to put this number in context since virtually none of its readers has any idea of the importance of this level of spending as it is written in the piece.
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