25% seems to be pretty accurate. Note that it was 40% at one time. Talk about suicidal...
The ceiling. The largest distortion to equity has traditionally been the ceiling, which has capped the United States to an assessment level below its share of world income since the U.N.’s creation. The ceiling was initially set at nearly 40 percent (when the U.S. accounted for more than half of world income); instead, member states agreed that the ceiling would be lowered in stages to the 25 percent level sought by the Truman administration as changing economic conditions and admission of new members allowed. The ceiling drifted progressively downward, reaching 25 percent in 1973—the year the two German states were admitted to the United Nations—after a strenuous campaign by the Nixon administration. Arguing for the final-stage reduction, then-U.S. permanent representative George Bush told Assembly delegates that, with the ceiling lowered to 25 percent in fulfillment of the 1946 agreement, the United States would never again seek a reduction in that cap.
That, of course, was then. In recent years Washington has begun calling insistently for a reduction in its assessment—first for peacekeeping expenses (set under the General Assembly’s peacekeeping formula at 30.4 percent) and then in the regular scale. One of the conditions for U.S. payment of back dues included in the aborted 1997 agreement on U.N. funding between the U.S. administration and the Senate foreign relations committee leadership was a demand for a reduction in the U.S. assessment to 22 percent in 1998 and to 20 percent in 2000.
The call for a reduction in the ceiling drew considerable opposition among other member states, which would of course have had to pick up the difference. The existing ceiling, they noted, already assesses the United States at below its share of world income (which is 26.16 percent, using the 6-year base period); any further reduction would be counter to equity3. Whatever may have been the prospects for such a rate reduction (and they were generally handicapped as slim for a 22
percent rate, and virtually nil for a 20 percent rate), they evaporated after the U.S. Congress scuttled even the promise of U.N. funding when it adjourned in November.
While declining to tinker with the ceiling, however, the General Assembly did give notice it would revisit the question once U.S. arrears were paid. Even the offer to reopen the scale once the rates have been struck and applied is unprecedented— indeed, in the international community the very offer is viewed as extraordinary.
Thhis and more here: http://www.unausa.org/newindex.asp?place=http://www.unausa.org/programs/scale.asp
Links page here: http://www.globalpolicy.org/finance/assessmt.htm
I wonder if the UN has their members' pension fund in stocks? I've lost almost 1/2 of my portfolio because of the UN's BS...well, since 911, but even more since 11/01. I wonder if they've lost 1/2 of theirs?