Would Cutting Foreign Aid Help Israel?
Six Democratic Senators wrote to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers of Kentucky and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) February 1 complaining that “Republican Senator Rand Paul suggested that the United States should ‘halt all foreign aid including its financial aid to Israel.’” The six Senators — Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Robert Casey (D-Pa.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) — concluded that Dr. Paul’s proposal was “alarming and aim[ed] to weaken the decades-long bipartisan consensus on U.S. support for Israel.”
Interestingly, the words attributed to Paul were never spoken by him; those words are merely a press summary of Dr. Paul’s views. Of course, the fictional quote sounded like a strong attack against the Jewish state of Israel, but it was taken out of context. The Kentucky Senator and eye surgeon did indeed answer “yes” when asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, on January 26, whether he believed the United States should “end all foreign aid including the foreign aid to Israel as well.” But Dr. Paul noted in context that cutting out all foreign aid would help Israel, in part because “when you send foreign aid, you actually send quite a bit to Israel’s enemies. Islamic nations around Israel get quite a bit of foreign aid, too.... So really you have to ask yourself, are we funding an arms race on both sides?”
Dr. Paul also stressed he has “a lot of sympathy and respect for Israel as a democratic nation, as a, you know, a fountain of peace and a fountain of democracy within the Middle East. But at the same time, I don’t [believe in] funding both sides of the arms race, particularly when we have to borrow money from China to send it to someone else. We just can’t do it anymore. The debt is all consuming and it threatens our well being as a country.”
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