I don't think his personal opinion matters more than that of the hundreds of officials that Americans have chosen to speak for them.
Spineless Trumpling Mike Johnson refuses to allow the House to vote on Ukraine Aid bill
- Thread starter mandrill
- Start date
If international obligations are of such paramount importance
then it is prudent to cut spending on some other items at a time
when cost of debt servicing is rising.
Interest costs for federal debt soar 37% to new highs
Ottawa spent $11.3 billion in interest payments during 2023's third quarter, compared to $8.3 billion the same quarter in 2022.
nationalpost.com
I suspect Johnson can kill the Ukraine aid bill without worrying about riots incited
by Americans who have chosen those hundreds of officials to speak for them.
The security of Ukraine and Israel is important to the U.S. as well as the rest of the world.
So he should only let the people speak through the officials that they voted in if there may be rioting?
That's your argument?
Not an argument. I simply noted Johnson could get away
with taking the time to approve the Ukraine aid bill.
It's funny how everyone pretends like it's a humanitarian thing. The US could give two fucks about the people of Ukraine. What they do care about is Russia taking over their natural resources and commodities. Ever wonder why the US never provides aid to all the fucked up countries in Africa and Central America?
After the war ends and I think it will end in Russian occupation of
a small part not the whole of Ukraine Big Oil and other western
natural resource enterprises would venture into the broken country
like vultures to exploit its resources of oil, gas, coal and minerals.
Some of them may even come to the rescue of Russia's declining
oil industry devastated by sanctions with support from the U.S.
administration.
The aid bill will eventually be approved and passed by
the House of Representatives against Johnson. The bill
benefits the military industrial complex tremendously.
Johnson will give up the fight.
So let me understand this, Oily.... The "experts" that you're quoting are Al Jazeera and Rep. Cori Bush (soon to be not-Rep Bush).Who said not having an armed force? It is irresponsible to
spend money on foreign wars where the rest of the world
could foot the bill. Borrowed money should only be spent
at home.
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Experts say billions in US Senate bill would be better spent at home
Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
14 Feb 2024
While President Joe Biden says bill will stimulate the economy, experts say social spending provides a bigger boost.
A number of scholars, politicians and advocates have condemned the United States Senate’s passage this week of a foreign funding bill that would provide billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan while American social programmes are in need of funding.
It is unclear when – or even if – the House of Representatives will vote on the measure, which includes $9bn in international humanitarian assistance, some of which could go to besieged Palestinians in Gaza.
But in passing the $95bn emergency aid package on Tuesday by a margin of 70 to 29, analysts say the Senate articulated Capitol Hill’s longstanding prioritisation of guns over needs for housing, healthcare, education and debt relief.
Lindsay Koshgarian, programme director of the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, told Al Jazeera that she had “extreme concerns” about the total amount of the Senate legislation.
“At $95bn, it’s a significant increase to the US federal budget and a significant devotion of resources to war,” she said.
“There’s huge discrepancies in where the resources are going.”
Across social media this week, some observers also denounced the foreign aid bill by invoking a lyric from the late rapper Tupac Shakur: “Got money for war, but can’t feed the poor.”
The Senate bill provides $60bn in military and economic aid to Ukraine and $14.1bn in security assistance to Israel, among other things.
Money for munitions is tantamount to “throwing good money after bad”, according to critics of the legislation. House Speaker Mike Johnson has suggested he won’t allow the aid package to reach the House floor for a vote, as he had demanded immigration reform as part of the legislative package.
Since former President Lyndon B Johnson’s administration in the 1960s escalated the war in Vietnam and derailed the War on Poverty programme, the federal government has increasingly squeezed out social spending while devoting larger and larger proportions of its overall budget to militarised programmes.
According to a May report by the National Priorities Project, 62 percent of the federal discretionary budget – $1.1 trillion – went to these programmes in the 2023 fiscal year.
In contrast, “less than $2 out of every $5 in federal discretionary spending was available to fund investment in people and communities”, including public education, housing, and childcare, among other social programmes.
“We must invest in humanity, both at home and abroad. Congress must stop funneling taxpayer dollars into endless wars and invest in the housing, health, education, and social programs our communities need,” Democratic Congresswoman Cori Bush tweeted on Tuesday after the Senate bill was passed.
In particular, the Senate’s decision to funnel more military aid to Israel while it continues to bombard the Gaza Strip has fuelled widespread criticism and raised questions about priorities on Capitol Hill.
“In a situation where the International Court of Justice has said that it’s plausible that a genocide could be occurring [in Gaza], the decision by the Senate to approve sending $14bn in weapons to Israel makes the US more directly complicit,” said Mike Merryman-Lotze, Just Peace Global Policy director at the American Friends Service Committee.
William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and expert on US military budgets, also
said that, overall, “even by Washington standards, $95 billion is a lot of money”.
The Senate bill’s passage, Hartung wrote in Forbes on Wednesday, “lays bare the skewed priorities of the federal government”.
“Despite deep divisions, it is possible to get bipartisan support for a package that mostly involves funding weapons exports. Don’t expect any such emergency measure to address record levels of homelessness, or aid the one in six American children living in poverty, or accelerate investments in curbing the climate crisis,” he said.
Biden has argued that the bipartisan legislation is critical to US national security interests and sends a clear message that his administration continues to stand by its allies. The bill also will bolster the US economy by creating jobs, according to the president.
“While this bill sends military equipment to Ukraine, it spends the money right here in the United States of America in places like Arizona, where the Patriot missiles are built; and Alabama, where the Javelin missiles are built; and Pennsylvania, Ohio and Texas, where artillery shells are made,” Biden said in a White House address on Tuesday.
“And the way it works is we supply Ukraine with military equipment from our stockpiles, and then we spend our money replenishing those stockpiles so our military has access to them – stockpiles that are made right here in America by American workers,” he said.
“That not only supports American jobs and American communities, it allows us to invest in maintaining and strengthening our own defence manufacturing capacity.”
But research has shown that other types of government spending would do more to boost jobs than what one researcher described (PDF) as Washington’s pattern of “feeding one wolf – the militarized economy – to the detriment of others”.
Heidi Peltier, senior researcher at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University and programmes director at the Costs of War project, wrote in a June report that military spending supports 6.1 jobs per $1m spent.
By comparison, the report found that healthcare creates 11.6 jobs per $1m – nearly double – while a $1m investment in primary and secondary education creates 21 jobs, more than three times as many. The same investment in wind and solar also would create nine to 14 percent more jobs.
According to Koshgarian of the Institute for Policy Studies, there are a multitude of ways $95bn could be better used to support Americans, from funding programmes that tackle child poverty and education, to addressing housing affordability issues.
She noted, for example, that a critical federal nutrition programme for women, infants and children – known as WIC – is facing a $1bn funding shortfall. “It’s an incredibly important programme, there are many families that have depended on it,” she said. “$1bn to make up the shortfall would be easy to come up with.”
The US is also falling short of its climate adaptability and green economy goals, Koshgarian told Al Jazeera, and the public is “told consistently that we don’t have the funds to afford those programmes in full”.
Greater investments in programmes like these, she added, will “pay off in multiple ways down the line for people in this country, in a way that investing in wars overseas [doesn’t]”.
“When the US invests in war in another location, it just perpetuates those instabilities, and it’s not a cycle that can end through just investing in militarism over and over again.”
Merryman-Lotze at the American Friends Service Committee also said that $95bn could be better spent on domestic priorities, such as the environment and education.
And if the US really wants to address the root causes of conflicts abroad, it could also do better than spending money on weapons, he added.
“The US approach to conflict and problems is one that is highly militarised, whether that’s the way in which we respond to crime at home through policing and prisons, or we respond to conflict overseas through a reliance on military force,” Merryman-Lotze told Al Jazeera.
“The first thing that we turn to in most instances is the military, the police, violence and guns. That’s the way that our system has been built up over decades, and
there’s a need to break away from that addiction to the idea that force is how we bring ourselves security.”
Experts say billions in US Senate bill would be better spent at home
While President Joe Biden says bill will stimulate the economy, experts say social spending provides a bigger boost.www.aljazeera.com
I posted an article the title of which implies those quoted in it asSo let me understand this, Oily.... The "experts" that you're quoting are Al Jazeera and Rep. Cori Bush (soon to be not-Rep Bush).
"experts".
I do agree Cori Bush and others quoted along with
Al Jazeera are not much of real experts. That being
said, it seems believable that even non-experts could
figure out the $95 billion to be spent on Ukraine, Israel
and Taiwan is a cheque for the military industrial complex.
Passing it as money well spent would be hard-sell to
a significant fraction of voters.
Interesting question...I think our system works better to an extent. I do sort of wish there was more bipartisan work done on bills, but that isn't the case here (unless you have a minority government). But, there is less chaos, so that is good....
it's not about the people, it's about Russian imperial ambitions and about other thugs and terrorists worldwide smelling US weakness and raising their heads
Any U.S. weakness can easily be compensated by affluent
European NATO members.
Germany, France, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the UK
together are loaded with more than sufficient dough
needed to replenish out-of-date weapons in their arsenals
which they can pass to Ukraine. Finland in particular
should be well motivated to take the lead to defend Ukraine
given their long border with Russia and history of fighting
Soviet-Russia heroically (along with the Nazis) in WWII.
Trump will be happy to spend big time to enrich the U.S.
military industries seeing that Europe is scrambling to
shore up defense to avoid his wrath. Ukraine could be
even better supplied under Trump if only Europe is willing.
European NATO members.
Germany, France, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the UK
together are loaded with more than sufficient dough
needed to replenish out-of-date weapons in their arsenals
which they can pass to Ukraine. Finland in particular
should be well motivated to take the lead to defend Ukraine
given their long border with Russia and history of fighting
Soviet-Russia heroically (along with the Nazis) in WWII.
Trump will be happy to spend big time to enrich the U.S.
military industries seeing that Europe is scrambling to
shore up defense to avoid his wrath. Ukraine could be
even better supplied under Trump if only Europe is willing.
The real issue is not the money, which is certainly ver important, but rather than the stable genius is the de facto Speaker.
Between Trump taking the place of Biden
and receiving more aid (irrespective of who
the president is) I suspect Zelensky will prefer
the latter.
