The US House of Representatives rejected on this Tuesday a bill that would provide $17.6 billion in aid to Israel.
This Tuesday, the US Lawmakers in the House of Representatives decided to say a big “NO” to the Republicans in the Senate who proposed a new aid package for Israel worth more than $17 billion.
The proposal includes sending Israel $17.6 billion in military support, $4 billion to replenish the Iron Dome and David Slingshot systems, $3.3 billion to support US military operations in the Arab region, and $200 million toward the protection of US citizens.
The pro-Israel Republicans, however, failed to get the bill passed through the House as more than two-thirds of the members of the House voted against the generous bill. To be passed, the bill needed a vote of 250 to 180, falling two-thirds short of what was needed.
Listing their reasons for rejecting the expensive bill, the Democrats opposing the bill noted that they disagreed because they think there must be on the table a broader measure that would include military assistance for Ukraine, humanitarian assistance for Palestinians in Gaza, funding for US border security, as well as military and financial aid for Taiwan.
Rebuking the Republicans for the aid proposal, Representative Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said that the proposal would “accomplish nothing, and delays aid getting out to our allies and providing humanitarian relief.” She also asserted that “our allies are facing existential threats, and our friends and foes around the globe are watching, waiting to see how America will respond. So we need to help all, not just one.” For his part, US President Joe Biden also threatened that even if the bill reaches his desk for emergency approval, he would veto it.
Do US debts allow such generous acts?
Republicans’ efforts to send so much money to Israel in the form of military aid is happening while the country is badly grappling with a worrying growth in national debts, inflation, and rising prices.
The US national debt reached an unprecedented number of 34 trillion dollars in December 2023, which was added by 1 trillion dollars in just three months, from September to December 2023. To read between the lines, the budget’s annual deficits range between 4.6% and 6.8% of the economy, far above the pre-pandemic historical average of 2.9%.
This simply means that Washington is spending more than it earns, and the worse news for the American people is that one of the main sources of these expenses goes outside the country’s borders as financial and military aid to allied countries, especially Israel.
This has worried not only the American people, but also many politicians from both parties, and they are now demanding the government reduce the amount of foreign aid and allocate such funds to domestic issues. Good to mention that the US spends billions of dollars annually in military and financial aid to allied countries (more than 1% of the country’s total budget).
Americans believe that while the US budget deficit is negative and the main cause of inflation in this country is the mismatch between the budget and the country’s expenses, the government should reduce its involvement in affairs outside the borders and reduce the expenses related to
Inflation and rising prices in the US have also led more and more Americans to doubt the necessity of such generous donations to Israel. The annual inflation rate in the US went up to 3.4% in December 2023 from a five-month low of 3.1% in November.
But Biden has nothing to defend when it comes to inflation. In January 2021, when Biden was inaugurated, inflation rate was 1.4 percent. Last June, the inflation rate hit a four-decade high of 9.1 percent, a record in US history. Even now, the inflation rate is nearly three times more than it was during the Trump administration.
