Steny Hoyer: “I have long supported the premise that the United States should participate in the United Nations and that if we want to…”

“I have long supported the premise that the United States should participate in the United Nations and that if we want to maintain our leadership role that we ought to pay our dues. I must say, therefore, that I am ambivalent on the means used in this resolution, but I am not ambivalent at all on the sentiments and the point that it makes. I rise, therefore, in support of the intent of this resolution. I have not decided, frankly, how I am going to vote, but there ought to be 435 of us who, in the strongest possible terms, say that this was an act of a commission that knows that it is the United States day after day, week after week, month after month, in every forum in the world... This was an act perpetrated, frankly, by the abusers of human rights, by those who would like to hide the abuses that exist in so many parts of this world; that would like to hide the shortcomings to international standards that so many nations demonstrate. That ought not to be left to stand.”