Joe Biden vs. Mike Johnson, supporting Israel edition

Speaker Mike Johnson just announced that the House hopes to vote on a standalone appropriations bill to support Israel this Thursday. According to the article, "House Republicans have rolled out a bill giving $14.3 billion in aid to Israel, while cutting into cash President Biden allocated toward the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) last year."

That's where things get sticky. The article continues, saying "The 13-page bill released on Monday would completely offset the foreign aid by rescinding those funds from the Inflation Reduction Act passed last year. Specifically, it targets some of the $80 billion the package gave to the IRS." It's sticky because "Biden asked Congress to approve a mammoth $106 billion supplemental funding request with $14.3 billion for Israel, more than $60 billion for Ukraine, just over $13 billion for U.S. border security and an additional $10 billion in humanitarian assistance." Biden apparently thinks that massive deficit spending isn't inflationary.

Things get sticky for the administration, too, because House Democrats are stuck in the position of either voting to support Israel or getting crushed in 2024. Head? Republicans win. Tails? Democrats lose seats.

It's sounding like the Senate will pass the administration's bill as is. That sets up a showdown between the House and Senate. Let's consider the possibilities if that's the showdown that happens:

  1. The House accepts the Senate bill.
  2. The Senate accepts the House standalone bill.
  3. The House and Senate go to conference, where they iron out their differences.
  4. The House and Senate go to conference, were neither budges.

It isn't likely that the House budges on Israel funding:

I also suspect that there won't be Ukraine and border funding without policies attached to those bills. The border security bill as proposed by Biden isn't a security bill. I wouldn't bet on that getting a vote in the House. I'm betting the Senate bill gets split up the minute it reaches the House.

The House bill funds Israel's needs without spending recklessly. Speaker Johnson's messaging has been clear since attaining the speakership. Priorities will get funded while reckless spending ends on his watch. That means the end of omnibus (Christmas tree) bills.

The Senate's message is muddier. They're saying 'pass the bill as is so everything we need is funded plus some things we don't need are funded, too. Who cares if the debt in $33,600,000,000,000? (That's $33.6 Trillion.) If Republicans want to follow Mitch McConnell off a cliff on this bill, they'll get primaried the next time they're up for re-election.

Speaker Johnson is on the right side of the spending issue and the supporting Israel issue. People know that we've spent too much. Further, they know that supporting Israel doesn't require supporting Hamas assistance. When it's called humanitarian assistance, that's just spin for Hamas assistance because Hamas runs the government in Gaza. Anyone thinking that Hamas will ship humanitarian aid to the people isn't cynical enough.

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