The United States, by far the leading contributor to the United Nations, overpaid its share of the U.N. peacekeeping budget for 2010-2011, but budget-cutters in Congress did not learn about the full extent of the credits in the U.S.'s favor until February 2011, during the battle with the Obama administration over 2011 budget cuts, Fox News has learned."We didn't know we had a lot of these credits until we asked about them," said one congressional source, describing the budget cutting process. "At least we've taken away the ability of the administration and the U.N. to accumulate them."
Peacekeeping savings, including the overpayments, amount to $286.7 million--more than three-quarters of $377 million in cuts to various U.N. payments that are included in the controversial $38 billion in 2011 budget reductions that Congress approved on Thursday.
The $377 million in U.N. cuts is a comparative drop in the bucket compared to the roughly $6.35 billion that the U.S. sent to the U.N. in 2009, according to the last comprehensive set of figures compiled by the Obama Administration.
Overpaid: See Bribes
See also: slush fund