Reply to Comment on A House G.O.P. proposal for Israel’s defense and humanitarian aid”
The bill would send $14.3 billion to Israel without addressing funding requests for the war in Ukraine. Johnson’s new bill would pay for the spending with $14.5 billion in cuts to the long-understaffed Internal Revenue Service.
The American people will say that standing with Israel and protecting the innocent is more urgent than the I.R.S. agents, according to Mr. Johnson.
The House is on a collision course with the Senate, where a bipartisan group of lawmakers wants Congress to address both conflicts at the same time.
“Instead of advancing a serious proposal to defend Israel, defend Ukraine and provide humanitarian aid, this House G.O.P. proposal is clearly designed to divide Congress on a partisan basis, not unite it,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said in an address from the Senate floor. He said, ” I hope the new speaker notices that this is a grave mistake and quickly changes course.”
The bill for Israel has already been objected to by two Republicans, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
The United States needs to focus on spending its own money on its own people, not the rest of the world, wrote Ms. Greenberg on social media.
“It actually doubled down on the borrowing by rescinding money that goes to the IRS, which would translate into a larger loss of money in collected revenues,” MacGuineas says. “So that bill could be double as expensive as the actual bill, if the IRS funding were to be pulled back.”
The president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Maya MacGuineas, said in a statement that the House’s call to offset military spending for Israel with spending cuts was “welcome news,” but paid for by defunding tax enforcement is worse than not paying for it.
“Instead of costing $14 billion, the House bill will add upward of $30 billion to the debt. This plan is double dipping, instead of avoiding new borrowing.
Why the Biden administration is proposing a decoupling bill to address the threat facing America and our Allies, Senator Susan Collins of Maine
Even the leading Republicans think the Biden administration’s strategy of linking Ukrainian and Israel funding is a good idea, so the legislation will be dead when it arrives in the Senate.
McConnell, the minority leader of Kentucky, has been the most vocal advocate for funding of the war in Ukraine and has doubled down on his support.
“The threats facing America and our allies are serious and they’re intertwined,” he said on Tuesday. “If we ignore that fact, we do so at our own peril.”
He added on Tuesday that while he and Mr. Schumer were “conceptually in the same place” on linking Ukraine and Israel aid, Democrats would need to swallow “strong border provisions” in order to win Republican votes.
Some people think that our support for Ukranian comes at the expense of more important priorities. This is a false choice and he called for swift and decisive action.
“Some have argued for decoupling funding to address these threats,” Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the top Republican on the Appropriations Committee, said on Tuesday at the start of a hearing with top administration officials to discuss Mr. Biden’s national security spending request. “We must recognize that our national security interests are being aggressively challenged by all these authoritarian actors in an effort to dismantle the international order that we established following World War II.”
Mr. Hawley added: If Mr. McConnell “thinks he can make a case on Ukraine, fine, go for it. I think you can get it passed, probably as a stand alone bill. He is welcome to do that. I would encourage you not to hold up Israel.
Senator Patty Murray of Washington tried to get the attention of top administration officials, who were against packaging all of the security spending in one large bill.
At the meeting with Mr. Johnson, the Secretary of State said that Iran and Russia were working together to try and hem us in. They will see when we start to peel off bits of this package. They will know we are playing whack-a-mole.
House Republicans aim to pay for Israel aid with cuts to IRS funds: “This is not a poison pill,” said Rep. De Lauro
DeLauro called on House Republicans to come to the negotiating table to pass a comprehensive emergency supplemental package as well as 2024 full-year funding bills. If Congress does not pass a spending bill by the 17th of November, the government will shut down.
She took issue with other aspects of the bill, including that it does not include money for humanitarian assistance in the Middle East and also “abandons our allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific and fails to include much-needed domestic investments.”
She said that House Republicans were setting a “dangerous precedent” by suggesting that responding to emergencies is contingent upon cutting other programs.
“Urgent crises are addressed by emergency supplemental funding,” stated Rep. De Lauro, the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee.
Senate Foreign Relations Chair Ben Cardin was the one who referred to it as a poison pill.
It is likely that both sides of the aisle will not support the bill based on precedent not wanting to tie emergency funding to spending cuts.
She claims that taking money away from the IRS is not the smartest thing to do in order to be fiscally responsible.
The bill intends to take some IRS funds in order to deal with the current national security needs, according to Johnson.
The IRS has not been well funded since the 1980’s, according to the Brookings Institution. Its enforcement budget was slashed nearly a quarter in the last decade, and further cutting its budget remains a top Republican priority.
It launched an initiative earlier this month using federal funding to ensure large corporations pay their taxes.
The IRS has said it will use that money to update its decades-old computer systems, improve customer service and step up enforcement for collecting the estimated $600 billion in taxes that go unpaid every year, much of it from wealthy people who under-report their income.
The House bill cuts some funding for the IRS, which handles tax return processing, taxpayer service and enforcement.
Reply to Rep. Blinken and Austin on the Senate Appropriations Committee: Israel Funding with Cuts to IRS Funds
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin appeared in front of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday to make the case for continued U.S. aid to both countries. Their testimony was repeatedly interrupted by protesters calling for a cease-fire in the Middle East.
“We’re not just gonna print money and send it overseas,” he said. “Because the other concern that we have that is overriding this is our own strength as a nation, which is tied to our fiscal stability. And that’s a big problem that we have as well. As we try to help everyone else, we have to keep it in mind.
McConnell said that the time was ripe for action to prevent additional loss of life and to impose real consequences on the tyrants who have wreaked havoc in Israel and Ukraine. “And right now, the Senate has a chance to make supplemental assistance that will assist us in doing that.”
But Democrats are not alone in their objections. McConnell has repeatedly said the two issues are related. He specifically tied the two causes together on Monday in a speech introducing the Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S. at an event in Louisville.
Johnson told FOX News he would discuss the bill with Schumer, and that he believed it would drive away Democrats.
Source: House Republicans aim to pay for Israel aid with cuts to IRS funds
The Clinton-Bushush campaign: the U.S. response to the invasion of Iraq and the conflict with Israel, the Philippines, and the border
The majority of the $106 billion asked by the White House was for the Ukranian peninsula, but the rest went to Israel, the Philippines, and the U.S. border. The House bill allocates just over $5 billion in funding for Israel, which includes air and missile defense, military financing and embassy support.
The fight against Hamas is linked with the fight against Russia by the Biden administration, as the president stated in an Oval Office address last week that they both want to destroy a neighboring democracy. Biden warned of more “chaos, death and destruction” — and ultimately higher costs for the U.S. — if they don’t pay the price for their actions.
If the United States were to demand offsets for meeting core national security needs, such as support for Israel and defense of Ukraine, it would have disastrous implications for our safety and alliances in the future.
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