Thanks to Representative Randy Feenstra for sponsoring the National Science Foundation for the Future Act. The law contains provisions to ensure that the United States maintains its global leadership in science and technology, empowers our farming community, protects American interests, and prevents the abusive spending of taxpayer dollars, especially in this area. which concerns China, the main economic and technological rival of the United States. .

With the Commitment to Peace Keeping Act (HR4420), Feenstra has an additional opportunity to achieve these goals. The bill would lift an arbitrary and damaging 25% cap on US contributions to UN peacekeeping operations, allowing the US to lose its influence in world leadership, particularly in this regard. which concerns China.

China is now the second largest financial contributor to UN peacekeeping and has used this increased influence to advocate against human rights and the protection of civilians in UN peacekeeping operations, and used the lack of funding from the United States as a pretext to cut back on peacekeeping missions.

UN peacekeeping operations are a fiscally responsible and critical force multiplier for the United States. In the 2006 and 2018 reviews, for example, the Government Accountability Office found that it costs eight times more to financially support a United Nations peacekeeping mission than it does to deploy US military forces.

Join me is asking Representative Feenstra to co-sponsor HR 4420. This is what the people of Iowa want: a strategic and fiscally responsible way to stand up to China, and another tool in the kit to achieve the goals of the National Science Foundation for the Future Act. – Jane Shuttleworth, Okoboji, Iowa