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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is Joe Biden our Grifter-in-Chief?

Image
Apparently, Joe Biden doesn't care about the law or Supreme Court rulings. When asked about the ruling on his student loan bailout, Biden said that the Supreme Court misinterpreted the Constitution. He knows they didn't. That's just what he said to preserve the opportunity to introduce his next unconstitutional plan that will get rejected by the Supreme Court. This isn't about whether it's constitutional. It's about whether he can con enough young people into voting for him in 2024. Biden must've anticipated this ruling. Within an hour of the ruling, the Administration was out with this detailed fact sheet to replace the plan that he knew would fail. It opens with the same partisan attack as Democrats have mouthed. The fact sheet opens by saying "No President has fought harder for student debt relief than President Biden, and he’s not done yet. President Biden and Vice President Harris will not let Republican elected officials succeed in denying hard
Read more

Tim Walz's Confederate Flag Fiasco

Image
After Minnesota's Democrats shoved the most controversial progressive legislation down Minnesotans' throats, gossip started popping up about Gov. Walz being interested in running for president . That's died off but Gov. Walz is still making headlines, this time for all the wrong reasons. First, Gov. Walz isn't the brightest bulb in the chandelier. Still, Gov. Walz is fighting against Minnesota's history. This Alpha News article quotes David Hann, the chairman of Minnesota's Republican Party, as saying " The flag the DFL has eliminated was a version of the historic flag our regiments fought under during the Civil War. Minnesota was the first state to offer troops to the Union cause in 1861 , beginning a long tradition of leading the nation in confronting injustice. The DFL quest to erase our history is repugnant and should be rejected." Gov. Walz, though, sees things differently. He's quoted as saying "Minnesota is a diverse state, it continue
Read more

Maria Bartiromo's interrogation of Gov. Ron DeSantis

Image
Yesterday, Maria Bartiromo interrogated Gov. Ron DeSantis on Sunday Morning Futures. The first half of the interview, Bartiromo asked policy questions. Gov. DeSantis showed his understanding of the issues and presented his solutions on everything from China, inflation and growing the economy. The first reply he had was to cut spending. His next reply was to open energy production. Third, he talked about the importance of increasing productivity, which he correctly said is the best way to eliminate inflation. A little over half the way through the interview, though, it turned into an attack. Bartiromo asked "I'm wondering what's going on with your campaign. There was a lot of optimism about you running for president earlier in the year but here's this weekend's headline from the Politico Playbook: Failure to launch. Gov. Ron DeSantis's campaign to topple Donald Trump has stalled. We are way behind says a top DeSantis PAC official. What happened? Despite that bad
Read more