In March President Obama dolled out the first installment of his ideologically driven $3 billion pledge to the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund (GCF). The first $500 million handed out is just the start of what will amount to a massive transfer in the coming years of billions in taxpayer funds overseas. This Obama boondoggle has neither the consent of Congress nor the support of most American taxpayers.
Obama’s billion-dollar pledge came at the end of 2015 as part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris. The GCF was created as a fund within the UNFCCC framework, and the Obama Administration agreed to help raise $100 billion annually in funding for developing nations. Obama then unilaterally pledged $3 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds to the GCF without the consent of Congress.
While President Obama is no stranger to circumventing the roll of the legislative branch in order to further his own legacy, his willingness to unilaterally commit billions in taxpayer dollars oversees is a new low. Considering that the FY 2016 U.S. public debt totals $22 trillion, a $500 million handout, and more importantly a $3 billion pledge of U.S. funds, ignores the economic realities the country is facing.
In a recent scathing oped, Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) argued that GCF funding could instead have been used to combat the spread of the Zika virus, pointing out that Congress has granted the authority to pull money from bilateral economic assistance to foreign countries to combat infectious diseases.
“Congress refused to allocate funding for the U.N. Climate Change Fund…so the president used this account designated for international infectious diseases to pay for his priority,” Lankford wrote.
Senator Lankford is not the only lawmaker speaking out against Obama’s actions. A coalition of 37 Senators, led by Senators John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and James Inhofe (R-Okla.) sent a letter to President Obama last fall disavowing his diversion of funds without Senate approval.
Photo credit: Steve Jervetson