The $500 million check the State Department wrote to the United Nation’s Green Climate Fund Monday should not have been written, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said Tuesday during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. “I firmly oppose what the president is doing here in this misuse, I believe, of taxpayer dollars. I think completely in violation of the law, and this will come to additional concerns raised to you and those who work at the State Department for this mismanagement,” Barrasso said during the hearing.
The U.S. is committed to contributing a total of $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund and in the administration’s fiscal 2016 budget request Obama requested $500 million for the Green Climate Fund. House and Senate appropriators rejected that request, and Barrasso was none too happy that the State Department found the money regardless.
After the State Department “reviewed the authorities and opportunities available” to them in the FY16 omnibus, it was decided that the payment could be made out of the Economic Support Fund accounts, Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources, Heather Higginbottom, said during the hearing.
That fund, “supports programming in lots of different countries to address a lot of issues related to economic growth and opportunity,” Higgenbottom explained.
The money deposited into the Green Climate Fund would have been put to use elsewhere, Barrasso said. “I just think it’s hard to explain to taxpayers in struggling communities across our country … that this president and this administration is willing to give $500 million as a handout to foreign bureaucrats instead of addressing real problems here at home,” he said.
The deposit is in direct contradiction to the will of the majority party of Congress, which has long pledged that it would not agree to approve any funds for that use. Just a few days before President Barack Obama headed to Paris in December 2015 to negotiate the Paris Climate Agreement, Barrasso and a group of 36 other senators wrote a letter to him letting him know just that.
“While the Executive Branch and Congress both play an important role in the foreign policy of our nation, Congress ultimately holds the power of the purse. We pledge that Congress will not allow U.S. taxpayer dollars to go to the Green Climate Fund until the forthcoming international climate agreement is submitted to the Senate for its constitutional advice and consent,” the Nov. 19 letter says.
