Inhofe Floor Speech on U.N. Global Taxes Amendment
March 4, 2009
In 1996, the UN Secretary General announced that the UN was interested in pursuing a global tax scheme. In response, Congress passed, and President Clinton signed into law, a policy rider in the Foreign Ops and State Dept appropriations bill that would prevent the UN from using any US funds to pursue global tax schemes.
The provision has appeared in every annual appropriations bill since 1996, for 13 years. This year marks the first time an annual appropriations bill WILL NOT contain this policy provision preventing US tax dollars from funding UN global tax schemes. According to page 64 of Division H of the Joint Explanatory Statement, this policy provision has been intentionally left out of the FY09 omnibus appropriations bill.
Prohibiting US taxpayers funding UN global taxes in annual appropriations bills has been a bipartisan US policy for over a decade. Now is not the time to indicate that the US is no longer opposed to funding global tax schemes to unaccountable global bureaucrats. My amendment to the FY09 omnibus appropriations bill will reinstate this important US policy and ensure that officials at the UN and other international bureaucracies who receive generous funding from US taxpayers do not pursue or implement policies of international taxes on US taxpayers.
In addition, in the last two Congresses, I introduced what is known as the Helms-Biden Reauthorization Act, which withholds 20% of the US funding for the UN until the President certifies that the UN is not pursuing taxes on US citizens. I am preparing to reintroduce this legislation and have 10 original cosponsors so far.
The “findings” section of the Helms-Biden reauthorization bill contains 70 sections describing the different international tax schemes that have been under discussion among UN bureaucrats, academics, and foreign countries. Sometimes the language is cloaked to disguise the true design, but these proposals can often be found in UN literature as “innovative sources of financing.” This means international taxes.
As recently as 2005, however, the language is more explicit. The 2005 Human Development Report envisions “raising additional revenue through international taxation mechanisms.” There is also a significant complementary benefit to the UN’s international taxation schemes, which was described by UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in 1996: an international tax would mean that the UN “would not be under the daily financial will of the Member States.” I couldn’t have said it any better myself if you asked me why allowing the UN to implement international taxes on US citizens is a terrible idea. It would mean delegating sovereignty to an unaccountable international bureaucracy, one which has often not taken enough steps to combat corruption in its ranks.
It was Secretary General Boutros-Ghali’s remarks in 1996, in which he urged global taxation, which prompted the original enactment of the provision my amendment would add. Congress passed and President Clinton signed this provision into law in the 1997 foreign ops appropriations bill. It has been included in every foreign operations appropriations bill since. It has been a bipartisan US policy for well over a decade. It is important at this time that we make clear to the UN and other international bureaucracies that a policy of international taxes on US citizens is unacceptable. It should remain the policy of the United States to oppose international taxation. I urge my colleagues to support the amendment and I yield the floor.
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