Jewish Democrats accuse House Republicans of conditioning aid to Israel
House Speaker House Mike Johnson watches as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) delivers remarks on Oct. 25, 2023. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images
By Jacob Kornbluh November 1, 2023
A group of 21 Jewish House members accused House Speaker Mike Johnson of setting a “dreadful precedent” with a partisan bill that would provide Israel with $14.3 billion in military assistance but would also force deep cuts in the Internal Revenue Service’s budget.
“The net effect of this ploy will be to reduce the existing overwhelming bipartisan support for Israel within Congress,” the Democrats said in a joint statement on Wednesday, “and jeopardize our ability to support our allies around the world.”
The Democrats describe the bill’s IRS cuts as a “poison pill” drafted to manipulate supporters of Israel. Republicans outlined the choice it poses in stark terms.
In an interview on Fox News, Johnson dared Democrats to vote against the bill. “If you put this to the American people and weigh the two needs, I think they will say standing with Israel and protecting the innocent is a more immediate need than IRS agents,” Johnson said.
The legislation, which the Congressional Budget Office Wednesday concluded would add $12 billion to the deficit, is separate from the Biden administration’s request for a $106 billion military aid package for Israel and Ukraine. The GOP’s bill includes a provision that would take the aid for Israel from money originally allocated for the Internal Revenue Service as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called the Republican bill an attempt “to irresponsibly condition aid to Israel when Israel is at war and fighting for its very existence.” Jeffries said on CNN Tuesday evening that the Democratic leadership will consider its options before the House floor vote and is ready to “move forward in a bipartisan way.”
Rep Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat, said of the GOP bill: “When your neighbor’s house is on fire, you don’t haggle over the price of the garden hose.”
The House is expected to vote on the measure on Thursday.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive Democrat from New York, introduced an amendment to the Israel aid bill, prohibiting the funds from supporting the indiscriminate use of white phosphorous weapons “in densely populated areas” within Gaza. Ocasio-Cortez referenced reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch that allege Israel used white phosphorus in a Gaza port city in mid-October and in towns located along the Lebanese border. White phosphorous is a toxic solid, and may not be used indiscriminately or against civilians under international law.
Two Republicans object
Opposition to the bill also comes from two Republicans who have been accused of trafficking in antisemitism. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Thomas Massie of Kentucky both said they would vote against it. “We are $33 trillion in debt and our wide open border is a national security crisis,” Greene wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, in reply to Massie’s tweet criticizing the bill.
Greene, a supporter of former President Donald Trump, has been accused in the past of making antisemitic remarks — including her suggestion that a Jewish-funded space laser had sparked wildfires in California in 2018.
Massie has consistently voted against funding for Israel’s Iron Dome, including during the 2014 war in Gaza, and also opposed resolutions denouncing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and condemning rising antisemitism. He also voted against a bipartisan Holocaust education bill.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee pushed back against Massie, but didn’t respond to Greene.
AIPAC said it supports the Israel funding bill as a “first step in a process that will continue to unfold.”
House vs. Senate
The GOP bill sets the House on a collision course with the White House and the Democratic-controlled Senate, where there is bipartisan support for the Biden administration’s plan to combine funding for Ukraine and Israel. “The threats facing America and our allies are serious and they’re intertwined,” Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday. “If we ignore that fact, we do so at our own peril.”
Speaking on the Senate floor, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer expressed hope that the new House speaker would back away from the GOP bill, calling the current proposal a “joke.”
“Speaker Johnson and House Republicans released a totally unserious and woefully inadequate package,” Schumer said, that made funding for Israel “conditional on hard-right, never-going-to-pass proposals.”
The White House threatened to veto the Republican bill if it comes to the president’s desk. “The bill fails to meet the urgency of the moment by deepening our divides and severely eroding historic bipartisan support for Israel’s security,” White House officials said in a statement published in The New York Times. “It inserts partisanship into support for Israel, making our ally a pawn in our politics, at a moment we must stand together.”
The Jewish House members also expressed hope that the Senate will reject the GOP House bill and send back another to aid both Ukraine and Israel.
“Speaker Johnson’s partisan maneuver would set a dreadful precedent: No House Speaker has ever pitted American support for democratic allies and global security against domestic expenditure in this way, and it will be a very dark road to go down if the House GOP were to prevail on this matter,” they said.
This post was updated to add Schumer’s Senate floor remarks on Wednesday.
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