The Patriot Post® · WHO Shouldn't Get the Money

Yesterday was World Health Day, which marks the day in 1948 on which the World Health Organization (WHO) was established by the United Nations. Irony abounds.

First of all, the world is in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, meaning it is decidedly not healthy. But more to the point, the WHO is not worth celebrating. In fact, given its collusion with the communist Chinese and kowtowing to other lying authoritarian regimes, it’s worth defunding. Fortunately, President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are moving to do just that.

The WHO is “very China-centric,” Trump said. “And literally, they called every shot wrong. They didn’t want to say where [coronavirus] came from.” The WHO also denied person-to-person transmission even after the evidence suggested otherwise, and its China-backed director-general, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, criticized Trump’s effective travel restrictions with China for “increasing fear and stigma.”

Trump went on to discuss WHO funding. “For many years,” he noted, “we’ve been funding the World Health Organization. We’re going to look at it now.” In 2017, American taxpayers sent $513 million to the WHO, and the U.S. is its largest benefactor, supplying 22% of its budget in 2017. That was dwarfed last year. The Dispatch’s Daniel Vaughan reports, “At the end of 2019, WHO says that the United States was assessed nearly $240 million and gave another $656 million above that amount in voluntary funding. That places America on the hook for almost $900 million for end-of-year 2019.”

By comparison, how much does China give? Approximately $86 million annually. Trump observed, “I think every step that [the WHO] made, everything that they said was wrong and always in favor of China.” That’s a lot of influence for China for a tenth of the money we give.

Rep. Guy Reschenthaler and 20 House Republican cosponsors have introduced legislation to withhold WHO funding until Tedros resigns. Trump gave a thumbs up to the effort, saying, “We’re going to put a hold on money [sent] to the WHO.”

We’re guessing that most Americans aren’t going to complain about saving hundreds of millions of dollars by not funding a corrupt UN bureaucracy that treats Chinese lies as gospel truth. The question is why it has taken so long to even bring up the possibility.