Posted on 01/29/2011 10:50:23 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Skip ahead to 3:15 for the exchange on foreign aid generally and to 4:15 for the key bit. Paul’s not singling Israel out here; it’s Blitzer who brings it up, and Paul’s careful to offer praise before making his case that we simply can’t afford it anymore. He knows he’s suspect on this point because of his surname and has tried to deal with it behind the scenes. Remember this tidbit from that GQ hit piece on him last year?
Ron Paul, in addition to his extreme views on the federal government, has been a harsh critic of the Republican Party’s “military adventurism,” and in the past Rand has faithfully echoed his father’s views. He opposed the war in Iraq, once characterized the September 11 attacks as “blowback for our foreign policy,” and scoffed at the threat of Iranian nukes. And yet here he was in Washington, seeking out a secret meeting with some of the Ron Paul Revolutionaries’ biggest bogeymen. At a private office in Dupont Circle, he talked foreign policy with Bill Kristol, Dan Senor, and Tom Donnelly, three prominent neocons who’d been part of an effort to defeat him during the primary. “He struck me as genuinely interested in trying to understand why people like us were so apoplectic,” Senor says of their two-hour encounter. “He wanted to get educated about our problem with him. He wasn’t confrontational, and he wasn’t disagreeable. He didn’t seem cemented in his views. He was really in absorption mode.”
The following month, he met with officials from the powerful lobbying group AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), which has frequently clashed with Ron Paul over what the group views as his insufficient support of Israel. Paul, according to one person familiar with the AIPAC meeting, “told them what they wanted to hear: ‘I’m more reasonable than my father on the things you care about.’ He was very solicitous.”
The debate over foreign aid reminds me of the debate over earmarks. Yes, as Paul notes, plenty of it is wasteful, and indeed, when we’re trying to dig our way out of an umpteen-trillion dollar hole, every little bit helps. But compared to the real driver of America’s fiscal catastrophe, it’s small potatoes. That’s what I was getting at in my post about Boehner and Social Security the other day: Every relatively minor spending issue we lay on the table is an opportunity for opponents of entitlement reform to change the subject. Paul, to his great credit, is ready to go after Social Security too, but Democrats are already strategizing on how to short-circuit this debate. The latest: A new “Social Security Caucus” in the Senate aimed at giving Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer an extra megaphone to screech about how Republicans want to collapse a social safety net that’s well on its way to collapsing anyway. The foreign aid debate will go one (or both) of two ways for opponents of entitlement reform: Either (a) they’ll force a showdown on the issue to show how “heartless” the GOP is to the impoverished peoples of the Third World and/or (b) they’ll agree to some token reduction in aid and then tout it as a big concession in order to keep public perceptions of what constitutes a “meaningful” cut nice and low. Let’s deal with entitlements first and then start trimming around the edges with earmarks, foreign aid, etc, no?
The other reason this is a bad foot to start off on is, of course, that it’ll never pass. Financial support for Israel is deeply bipartisan in Congress. Even some pro-Israel tea partiers, like Allen West, would be loath to cancel their aid, I suspect, especially with Hezbollah now in control in Lebanon and the Muslim Brotherhood poised to ascend in Egypt. Until Iran’s regime, at least, is replaced with something less feral, there’s simply no way Congress will leave Israel to fend for itself. But I get that he’s making a principled point here about every last expense having to be on the table, so fair enough.
I agree
Israel is highly prosperous. Let em pay for their own stuff.
Definitely stop the flow of money to death cult or jihadi countries.
Let’s not call it foreign aid. Let’s just call it our debt and give much much more to Israel.
Sadly, we cannot afford not to, at least to some extent. But all other foreign aid should be cancelled for the duration.
The amount and direction of US foreign aid should be based on ROI....not PC, feel-good programs and other State Department liberal agenda “ideas” that merely serve to enrich the corrupt governments of those who don’t support us.
High on the Bright Idea part, low on the Thinking It All The Way Through portion.
Perhaps the only way out of the debt problems of the world is for a world committee meet and declare a jubilee where all debts are cancelled, we all pull in our belts, and start all over again. Maybe, just maybe we will have learned by our mistakes.
Mr. Paul—With all due respect, who do you think will fill the void?
We have to support our interests. It’s just what we have to do in world politics sometimes. And sometimes we get screwed over.
It is in our interests to make sure jihadists do not control any more countries than they already have. If we don’t support our allies (say Israel or Afgans), we will one day have to go there and finish the job ourselves.
This is what happened in 2001, if you have forgotten that.
I agree 100% that we should not be the the sponsor for the outside world. 90% of the money is outright waste, but some of the money is absolute critical to us.
For example, maybe if we had spent 2% of the Afgan war costs to foreign aid to Afghanistan in the 1990’s we would have prevented Al-Qaida to take over and 9/11 would not have happened and we would not be fighting there.
Frantzie! Is that you in the background with the TV sign? 8^)
Before everyone jumps on a jubilee with their little chain saws, the committee should be made up by CONSERVATIVE members of each country, the number of representatives according to the poluation of each country,with safeguards built in to prevent a globalist government. Each country then to return to it’s own government with recommendations agreed upon. Not a simple maneuver, but a start.
Ditto.
Please see my post 36,
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