Trump card

United Nations | Lawmakers and others are challenging the $1.2 billion price tag to renovate the UN building in New York—especially since the UN is holding out for an interest-free U.S. loan for the project | Priya Abraham

For United Nations--weary Washington lawmakers the set-up was a dream: Would billionaire developer Donald Trump, before a public Senate panel, say "Kofi Annan, you're fired"?

Mr. Trump did not utter his famous reality TV line, but after already dubbing the UN "a mess" he testified about the Annan regime's financial waste at a July 21 hearing before the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. His entry into the fray catapulted to notoriety a potential UN boondoggle.

Witnesses including Mr. Trump lambasted the UN's $1.2 billion plan to renovate its crumbling 1950s-era Manhattan headquarters. That amount is exorbitant, Mr. Trump and other New York developers say, but it is one American taxpayers may have to help shoulder, since the United States foots 22 percent of the UN's operating costs each year.