Washington, DC -- Representative Gregory W. Meeks, Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, today delivered the following opening remarks, as prepared, at a full committee hearing entitled "United Nations Accountability and Reform: Advancing an America First Foreign Policy Through Strategic Diplomacy and Burden Sharing.”

Members heard testimony from Mike Waltz, Representative of the United States to the United Nations, and Jeff Bartos, Representative of the United States to the United Nations for UN Management and Reform.

"Thank you, Chairman Mast, for calling this hearing. Welcome, Ambassador Waltz and Ambassador Bartos.

"In the eight decades since the United Nations’ formation, the United States has benefitted greatly from the multilateral world order it helped create and led. Of course, the United Nations has never been perfect. It is a complex institution, often slow-moving and imperfect. Congress has often demanded that it pursue reforms so the UN can better deliver on its mandate to promote international peace, security, and human rights.

"That’s because leaders from both parties have understood a fundamental truth: American security and prosperity are strongest when we shape the international system – not when we abandon it.

"The UN is not simply a forum for speeches. It is where sanctions are negotiated, peacekeeping missions are authorized, and pandemic responses are coordinated. It’s where refugees get help, international law is made, and coalitions are built to meet the shared challenges of our time. No nation, not even the United States, can solve these problems alone.

"American leadership at the UN has always been about ensuring those debates and decisions serve the American people. That is why I am deeply concerned by this administration’s 'burn it down' approach. Rather than strengthen America’s leadership within the UN system, this administration has surrendered it.

"Since January 2025 the Trump administration has withdrawn the U.S. from 69 UN agencies or entities, including the very UN body responsible for protecting children from sexual violence in war. It has pulled the U.S. out of UNESCO, withdrawn from the Human Rights Council, and abandoned the World Health Organization—even during an active Ebola outbreak, when it refused to let Americans exposed to the virus come home.

"This is not reform. This is retreat.

"And it has failed to pay our UN dues—funds Congress already appropriated—forcing severe budget cuts across UN entities, even ones the administration claims to champion.

"We hear the argument that this is tough love, necessary to drive UN reforms. But you cannot reform an institution by starving it. You can only weaken it, and hand the advantage to those who wish us harm. And the administration’s approach is also confounding our allies and accelerating our decline on the world stage.

"Mr. Waltz, you are leading this American retreat. Under your tenure, China is now paying to keep the lights on at the UN headquarters in New York, using our own austerity to cast itself as the responsible steward of the very system we built. The PRC has even offered to host UN bodies in Beijing and Hong Kong.

"Under your ambassadorship, the U.S. is siding with Russia and other adversaries on key votes, opposing UN resolutions on human rights, women, children, and refugees -- not on principle, but over culture war objections to a single word: 'gender.'

"And, Ambassador Waltz, you have called Trump the 'peace president,' yet this administration has gutted UN peacekeeping and replaced experienced negotiators with real estate developers. You have been a defender of President Trump’s war-of-choice in Iran, a war that has cost the lives of 18 U.S. servicemembers and achieved none of our core objectives. This includes one of my constituents, Sgt. Angel Rampersad from Ozone Park, who was killed this past Friday. You’ve done so with indifference to the costs this war has imposed on American families, or its upending of the global economy and our bilateral relationships.

"I cannot imagine a worse time to cede U.S. influence at the U.N than during a war Trump started with Iran—and still cannot end. The threats Iran poses can only be addressed diplomatically, multilaterally, with our allies and partners. Instead, this administration treats our friends like enemies—absurd new tariffs against Canada being the latest example. Countries around the world are asking—if this is how the U.S. acts toward its closest friends, how will it treat us? That doesn’t make them yield to our demands—it drives them to look elsewhere for leadership, and China is happy to provide it.

"The administration casts its foreign policies as putting 'America First.' In reality, it is America alone, a foreign policy of chaos and corruption that puts Americans last.

"Let me be frank: Ambassador Waltz, you moved into this job at the UN after a debacle in which you and other senior administration officials texted classified war plans to a journalist. 16 months later, nothing has changed. The incompetence continues—and it is Americans who keep paying the price.

"I welcome the witnesses’ testimony on the matters before us today. Thank you."

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