Interesting...US budget for UN going up...

[Soonerjeepman]

so we are laying White House staff off, so no tours...laying off National Park rangers...

BUT we can increase our money to the UN. I swear to God, we are frickin nuts. I'm sure EVERY OTHER country looks at us and thinks, what a bunch of dumb Americans...we'd take care of OUR country and people first..

WHY can't we just tell the rest of the world to stand in line...we are taking care of OUR people FIRST.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/04/12/despite-sequester-state-department-ups-support-for-un/

[KantoSooner]

No, most countries look at the UN and our involvement with it and try to figure out how we put that one over on them. Our total involvement with the UN is what? something below 1.5% of our budget? And for that we get something on the order of 20 national armies to fight proxy wars for us in better than a dozen countries around the world. All without US casualties or PR blowback. We get nifty little intelligence streams and a global presence to monitor everything from crop reports to water quality to immunization rates and disease outbreaks. We also get, frustrating though it is for our diplomats, an outsize influence in global culltural programs which drives the Venezuelans, the Iranians, the Saudis, the Chinese and the Russians absolutely bonkers.

It's money absolutely well spent and is, quite literally, 'taking care of our people FIRST'.

The sequestration is causing park shutdowns and other stupidity and that we did to ourselves and could just as easily cancel tomorrow. We're talking about something on the order of a $250 million increase in UN funding. Let's look at the $3 trillion or so spent on healthcare in this country. Reckon we could find 0.01% that we could shave there?

[FaninAma]

Kanto,
You are absolutely correct. Any country with the level of interventionist goals would want the UN located in their homeland.