Ban Ki-Moon's Puts UN Managers on Notice Over Bloated Budgets

Trust the UN Secretary to speak with a forked tongue. He "lambasted" his top managers to cut back on spending and to become "creative" and trim their budgets. And by how much does this socialist want his top peeps to cut the budget? Why, by a whole hefty 3%! Yeah - so instead of wasting $5.4 billion on "humanitarian" BS, they now only get to blow $5.2 billion. Wow, must be wonderful to get free money from the world's tax payers and then get to decide how they want to distribute it. They put the Mafia to shame. The good news is that the GOP USA is cutting funds to the UN, and so is the UK and with the earthquake in Japan, I'm guessing they won't be ponying up their 12.5% UN contribution either. Boo hoo - here's a dollar Mr Ban Ki-moon, go call someone who gives a damn.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon lambasted his top managers last week for their free-spending ways in the face of a worldwide economic downturn, and hinted at the possibility that the U.N.’s very existence could be in jeopardy if they didn’t get the message.

Ban told his top managers in a closed door session on March 7 that the world body is in an “emergency situation” when it comes to funding -- and they are not helping. According to notes from the session, obtained by Fox News, Ban chewed out the group for handing in submissions for their upcoming 2012-2013 budgets that overshoot previous planned budget ceilings and warned them that “things cannot be business as usual. The U.N., he said, “should not take it for granted that we are able to exist. We need to be creative and innovative.”

His chief of staff subsequently circulated Ban’s remarks to top staffers, along with a demand that they come up with some cost-cutting ideas by March 9 -- last Wednesday.

Ban issued his cost-cutting demand just days after the British Department for International Development (DFID) -- the rough equivalent of USAID -- announced in an extraordinary move that it would cease funding four minor U.N. agencies that it deemed inadequate “value for money."


Ban’s budget–cutting deadline was just two days before the horrific tsunami washed over northeastern Japan, staggering the economy of the U.N.’s second-largest donor, and undoubtedly adding further to a bleak economic picture for future U.N. giving. (Japan pays 12.5 percent of the regular U.N. budget, while the U.S. pays 22 percent.

But Ban’s definition of belt-tightening -- which he called “painful” -- might not be the same definition used by others. The secretary general is demanding a cutback of at least 3 percent in the $5.4 billion preliminary total he had already given the General Assembly as an “outline” for 2012-1013 (the full budget proposal won’t be presented until next September when the General Assembly reconvenes).

If Ban’s 3 percent ceiling were applied across the board next September, that would still mean an initial U.N. regular budget proposal for 2012-2013 of about $5.2 billion.

In reality, the proposed cutback is not really a cutback at all, but more like a scaling back in the rate of increase in U.N. spending. Even with the cuts, Ban’s outlined U.N. spending would still be much higher than it was at the same stage in the budget process for 2010-2011 -- when the U.N. proposed an initial budget “outline" of $4.6 billion.

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