4um: JTA: Cantor proposes separating Israel aid from foreign ops budget

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Title: JTA: Cantor proposes separating Israel aid from foreign ops budget
Source: Politico
URL Source: http://www.politico.com/blogs/laura ... oreign_ops_budget.html?showall
Published: Oct 24, 2010
Author: Laura Rozen
Post Date: 2010-10-28 19:24:38 by X-15
Keywords: None
Views: 263
Comments: 5

House Republican Whip Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Virginia) tells JTA in an interview that should Republicans take the House of Representatives next month, he would propose separating U..S. aid to Israel from the foreign operations budget, which the GOP may vote to defund:
A Republican Congress would seek to remove funding for Israel from the foreign operations budget, a GOP leader said.
U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor, the Republican whip and the only Jewish Republican in the House of Representatives, told JTA that a GOP-led House would seek to defund nations that do not share U.S. interests, even if it meant rejecting the president's foreign operations budget.
Cantor, of Virginia, said he wants to protect funding for Israel should that situation arise.
"Part of the dilemma is that Israel has been put in the overall foreign aid looping," he said when asked about the increasing tendency of Republicans in recent years to vote against foreign operations appropriations. "I'm hoping we can see some kind of separation in terms of tax dollars going to Israel."
Cantor's statement was a sign that the Republican leadership was ready to defer to the party's right wing on this matter. Some on the GOP right have suggested including Israel aid in the defense budget, and a number of Tea Party-backed candidates have said they would vote against what is known in Congress as "foreign ops."
However, until now at least, the GOP leadership has backed deferring to the executive branch when it comes to foreign spending, albeit after it has completed budgetary negotiations with the Congress. ...
The pro-Israel community has always backed the president's final foreign aid budget as a whole and strongly resisted proposals to separate funding for Israel for a number of reasons.
Among them, pro-Israel activists see aid for Israel as inextricably bound with the broader interest of countering isolationism; elevating Israel above other nations might be counterproductive in an American electorate still made up of diverse ethnic groups; and such a designation would make Israel more beholden to U.S. policy and erode its independence.
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#1. To: X-15 (#0) (Edited)
Cantor didn't do this without floating it and getting support from the usual neocons at media outlets and thinktanks and the Likudniks and AIPAC.
So this is a pretty serious neocon policy suggestion, a way of countering a likely turn against discretionary spending by the GOP. And Cantor is correct that the one nation America will support is Israel, no other country is so widely supported by Americans.
A couple of Jewish super-PACs have come out to spend a million each to defeat Sestak for his now-repudiated connection to J Street, recently exposed by William Kristol's mag as a Soros front.
To those who point out that Toomey wants to abolish general aid to Israel and only offer them military aid, I assume Cantor and the others have reasoned that Toomey could settle for cutting back on aid to only Israel and seeing a reduction of maybe $30B instead of seeing no progress made in reducing the foreign aid we foolishly borrow from the Chinese to shower on mostly worthless countries.
This story will be interesting to follow up through April. The GOP will follow a lame-duck strategy to block Obama, then a honeymoon strategy in January focusing on tax policy and the economy, and will end up at Paul Ryan's fiscal roadmap in April. This Israel-only foreign aid policy will likely be part of Ryan's roadmap.
This plays into Boehner's strategy for busting up omnibus bills and forcing votes on lots of much smaller bills. And the voters have oppose foreign aid of almost any kind except helping Israel. So even if Boehner lets the Dems or Republicans in the House offer bills for aid to countries other than Israel, they'd just get voted down and never make it to Obama to be vetoed or signed. But this one bill for Israel would sail through the House with everyone voting for it except a few like Ron Paul and be sent to Obama. He wouldn't dare not to sign it, knowing that if he did, this is the one issue that would bring the GOP and the Dems in Congress together to override his veto.
Naturally, the Dims will try to avoid this scenario at all costs. But advocating for the principle of general foreign aid will only hurt them with voters in 2012 (and Obama too) when the Dems have more vulnerable seats to defend, like Jim Webb and other Blue Dog types that all voted for the unpopular ObamaCare and come from Red states or swing states. So Dems in Congress would hardly dare to not cast a vote to override an Obama veto even if he had the guts to veto this Israel bill.
You have to admire the political strategy they're pursuing here. They are going to play chicken with the Dems over foreign aid generally and Israel specifically.
This is a move to make Israel the only special ally of America. No more special relationship with Europe, even the Brits. And it may prove fatal to NATO whose value as allies is questioned more every year.
Our cut-off of funds to Egypt and the Palis, considered vital to Israel's peace, would likely be replaced from the Saudi oil income. This probably ties together in some way for their recent announcement of a purchase of up to $60B in weaponry from America.
This story is interesting because you begin to see the outlines of the strategy Republicans will try to use against Obama, the kind of tactics they will pursue against Dems in Congress and against Obama in 2012.

TooConservative posted on 2010-10-28 21:48:48 ET Reply Untrace Trace Private Reply
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#2. To: TooConservative (#1) (Edited)
Excellent points. With Rahm Emanuel leaving the White House and David Axelrod being Obummers' "Rasputin", it'll be interesting to see which way he goes with Israel his last two years.

X-15 posted on 2010-10-28 22:02:59 ET Reply Untrace Trace Private Reply
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