So they want billions and billions in assistance to foreign countries, such as Ukraine, which is not a NATO country, but a big hog wallow for the U.S. foreign policy consulting establishment, nearly all Democrats, drawing lots of "contracts," if not losing track of the money entirely, as a top Ukrainian official admitted, but they refuse to lift a finger to halt Joe Biden's open-borders policies, which have created untold misery on city streets as migrants are dumped, human trafficking networks are empowered, cartels are growing so rich they are driving Mexicans out of their homes, families are being separated and broken up and kids sold into slavery based on Biden's immigration incentives, migrants ae dying en route through dangerous crossings, illegal alien crime is growing, and Democrat-led cities are seeing their budgets blown out and vital police and fire services cut. MONICA SHOWALTER
Misery: Democrats forced to choose between Ukraine and open borders
In the Senate, the GOP is doing what good politicians do and calling for some political horse-trading so that Joe Biden can get his $105 billion supplementary foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan through Congress.
That's too much for the Democrats.
Not the money, of course, but the surprise need to cut a deal.
According to Politico:
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer plans to hold a vote on President Joe Biden’s request for billions in assistance for Ukraine and Israel as soon as the week of Dec. 4, aiming to create some urgency amid tough negotiations.
The announcement by Schumer on Sunday puts pressure on lawmakers to come up with a border security deal that can pair with much-needed assistance for the two U.S. allies. Senate Republicans are seeking border security policy changes as part of any supplemental spending bill, hoping such a deal could clear a Ukraine-reluctant House GOP majority.
Schumer blamed that border demand as the “biggest holdup” to delivering new funds to Ukraine’s defense against Russia and Israel’s war with Hamas.“This has injected a decades old, hyper-partisan issue into overwhelmingly bipartisan priorities,” Schumer said in a Dear Colleague letter to senators. The Democratic leader said his 51-member caucus was “ready to work on common-sense solutions to address immigration” but warned that if the GOP took too hard a line, it could “jeopardize the entire” supplemental bill.
So they want billions and billions in assistance to foreign countries, such as Ukraine, which is not a NATO country, but a big hog wallow for the U.S. foreign policy consulting establishment, nearly all Democrats, drawing lots of "contracts," if not losing track of the money entirely, as a top Ukrainian official admitted, but they refuse to lift a finger to halt Joe Biden's open-borders policies, which have created untold misery on city streets as migrants are dumped, human trafficking networks are empowered, cartels are growing so rich they are driving Mexicans out of their homes, families are being separated and broken up and kids sold into slavery based on Biden's immigration incentives, migrants ae dying en route through dangerous crossings, illegal alien crime is growing, and Democrat-led cities are seeing their budgets blown out and vital police and fire services cut.
They don't like making deals with Republicans even if it means they get all they want.
And they're so used to the GOP caving in on them that they consider it an entitlement.
None of that is worth saving America from. Open borders is more important, at least as important as shoveling cash at Ukraine in a war without results, and that explains the unwillingness to compromise.
Of course, there are the extended work hours, too, which upsets them mightily:
[Schumer] also urged Democrats to engage more with Republicans to try to cut a deal, something he also tried to do right before the Thanksgiving recess. He warned of long nights and days ahead, as well as possible weekend work.
Worse still, they care so little about this open border they don't even notice that the polls are not running in their favor as illegal immigration brought on by open borders take a leading spot among voters' concerns. You'd think that would make them willing to play ball just to retain their seats, but nooo, open borders are an untouchable third rail for them.
It all makes them howl in misery and complain about "the biggest holdup" coming from the GOP and how unfair it is that they have to compromise on anything.
What is this compromise the Republicans are asking for in exchange for their votes to pass the spending package?
According to news accounts, the GOP is seeking legal changes to the definition of "asylum" such as it's practiced now so that only actual asylum cases of some level of merit will be considered. It won't just be claims about living in a bad neighborhood and wanting a better life, the types of asylum claims that regularly are thrown out once they reach a judge some ten years from now and the illegal migrant has long disappeared into U.S. society. Processing of U.S. asylum claims in a timely manner and according to U.S. capacity to process them could also be on the horse-trading list. Don't have enough personnel? Then applicants will have to apply to another country, and there are more than a hundred of them.
Such changes are reasonable if the GOP does not cave in, and would actually benefit Democrats too, though they see a bigger benefit in leaving the border open.
Now they have to choose -- aid to Ukraine, or defense of the U.S. border, which do they want more?
It's enough to make a Democrat go crazy, given their fondness for shoveling money to other countries to guard their borders while depriving the U.S. of any such capacity.
Hear how they whine.
The GOP is to be commended for finally taking its political role seriously and calling for Democrats to cough up on basic defense for the U.S. instead of just everyone else. Whether the Democrats can handle that tells us pretty much all we need to know about their priorities and political prowess.
Image: U.S. Department of State (cropped) / government work
US Spends Billions on Overseas Wars, But Who Really Benefits?
The White House says that spending tens of billions on foreign wars benefits Americans, but experts are divided.
The administration says the money, primarily for Israel and Ukraine, will be good for the economy.
Many are skeptical of the administration’s claims, however, and believe that the massive investment in the defense industry will squander the nation’s ability to adequately address social and infrastructure needs.
Presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy Jr. is among them.
“Creating jobs is a poor excuse for a foreign policy that wreaks mayhem around the world,” Mr. Kennedy told The Epoch Times in an email.
“If we want to increase employment in good manufacturing and construction jobs, instead of making weapons we should repair our infrastructure and manufacture products that actually serve human well-being.”
Defense Contractor Windfall
Numerous analysts believe that the administration’s supplemental, in addition to its record-breaking defense funding, would effectively serve as a massive transfer of wealth from American taxpayers to the defense sector.Stephen Semler, co-founder of the Security Policy Reform Institute think tank, said that defense contractors stand to reap billions from the administration’s requested supplemental, which would go “mostly to just a few companies.”
“Based on my estimate, the proposal would produce $60 billion in revenue for private-sector military contractors,” Mr. Semler said in an email.Whether those billions of dollars will adequately serve the national interest is an open question. To that end, Mr. Semler says that the Biden administration is now “selling” the spending package as an economic boon because most people won't believe it would improve national security interests abroad.
“If people don’t buy the foreign policy argument for spending $106 billion, the thinking goes, maybe they’ll support it if it’s framed as domestic policy,” Mr. Semler said.
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As such, the supplemental may actively erode the United States’ ability to create more jobs that would have a positive effect on American prosperity and well-being.
The larger issue is the record-breaking defense spending undertaken by the administration and Congress, culminating with last year’s largest-ever defense budget, according to Mr. Semler.
President Biden’s domestic spending efforts, notably the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, pale in comparison to the sums now being fed to the national defense apparatus.
“Between Biden’s foreign aid plan and the fiscal year 2024 Pentagon budget, I think military contractors can expect $559 billion,” Mr. Semler said.
“By comparison, Biden’s flagship infrastructure bill spends $548 billion over five years.”
Defense Lobby Incentivizing Conflict
A key concern of Mr. Semler and others is the continued incentivization of conflict, in which the defense industrial base may directly or indirectly work to prolong conflicts in an effort to maximize its economic gains.Mr. Semler pointed to the defense base’s “army of lobbyists,” which pressures the U.S. government to adopt hawkish policies and spending habits in the interest of their for-profit companies.
“When the U.S. buys weapons, it’s empowering a particular set of businesses whose bottom lines depend on the U.S. either making war or preparing for it,” Mr. Semler said. “These firms then redirect a share of their profits back into the political system in an attempt to steer national policy toward more war.
The effort included the employment of more than 845 lobbyists, some 72 percent of whom previously worked in government, mostly in the Pentagon or for the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.
Those lobbyists don’t just grease the palms of politicians; they influence the formulation of policy itself through massive cash injections to defense-focused think tanks.
The top recipients of this funding were the RAND Corporation, the Center for a New American Security, and the New America Foundation, which together brought in more than 600 different donations from U.S. government or defense contractors.
“The top funders from the U.S. government were the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Air Force, the Army, the Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department,” the report said.
“The defense contractors contributing the most to these think tanks were Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Airbus.”
Relatedly, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman were the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh largest corporate lobbyists in 2020.
In 2022, the four companies hired a combined 259 former government employees who now work as lobbyists, executives, directors, board members, and trustees.
“Of course, policymaking will always be influenced by ideologies,” Mr. Semler said. “We’ve all got one. But allowing the profit motivations of weapons companies to hold sway over decisions about war and peace is a different beast entirely.
“Some people don’t think this massive redistribution of wealth from taxpayers to private military contractors is a problem. I think it is.”
Congress's Role
The issue of war profiteering is not limited to the executive branch.Indeed, the revolving door between Congress and the defense lobby is wide, and the real world policy implications of the administration’s proposed spending will ultimately be realized by the House and Senate.
But big money has big consequences for members of Congress who rely on agreeable think tanks and keeping defense sector jobs in their districts to stay in office.
As such, continued Congressional support for the Israel–Hamas war, the Russia–Ukraine war, and elsewhere is unlikely to radically shift without a great deal of unrest among voters.
“U.S.-backed wars, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Ukraine and Gaza, have direct ramifications for the U.S. defense sector,” said Antony Loewenstein, an independent journalist and filmmaker who was based in East Jerusalem between 2016 and 2020.
“It’s partly why so few U.S. Congressmen and women are willing to challenge the military industrial complex, because it potentially brings jobs to their district.”
The Epoch Times requested comment on the issue from 31 members of Congress, including the chair and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. One responded.
A spokesperson for the office of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) directed The Epoch Times to Mr. Paul’s heated exchange with Secretary O’Brien on the issue of supplemental security funding.
At that time, Mr. Paul said the administration was “fomenting a war” to increase profits for defense corporations.“So really, it’s a justification of war,” Mr. Paul said.
Biden Risks Base with Continued Wars
The Biden administration’s decision to obfuscate the types of weapons platforms it is sending to Israel—it previously maintained some transparency in Ukraine—makes things worse, Mr. Loewenstein said.“It’s almost as if elements of the White House prefer secrecy to sunlight,” he said.
One reason for the opacity may be the decreasing popularity of the Biden administration and its continued funding of foreign wars.
That same polling found that the economy has been the most important issue to Americans for the last 113 consecutive weeks, perhaps hinting at the administration’s efforts to rebrand the supplemental security request as a domestic priority.
Continued Pentagon Audit Failures
To be sure, it can be difficult to tell where legitimate security concerns end and war profiteering begins.Further complicating that complexity is the Pentagon's inability to account for its spending.
That’s a real problem given the fact that the supplemental request does not aim to provide money to embattled nations or sell them arms, but rather to directly transfer old arms and then hand the money to American defense corporations to replace them.
The lack of transparency by the administration, the Pentagon, and the associated defense companies could therefore encourage a more general lack of accountability by U.S. leadership for ongoing violence in the foreign wars it funds, according to William Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force.
Like Mr. Semler, Mr. Astore suggests that the administration should invest in more and better jobs at home, and pull back from knee-jerk defense spending.
It’s an issue that every American should care about, he said, because the nation will be stronger if that funding is directed somewhere else.
“Americans should care,” Mr. Astore said, “because we as a country can create more jobs by investing in America rather than exporting deadly weaponry worldwide.”
The Eisenhower Moment
Mr. Astore referred to former president and retired five-star general Dwight D. Eisenhower, who urged in a 1953 speech against reckless military spending following World War II and the Korean War, when such dollars could be spent on infrastructure that would improve the prosperity and well-being of Americans instead.A massive and permanent military, President Eisenhower said, was “new in the American experience,” and quite ironically, could threaten the nation’s continued security and liberty if overinflated in the pursuit of security and liberty.
It is just such an apparatus that Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Semler, Mr. Loewenstein, and Mr. Astore fear now.
For President Eisenhower, there was one solution to a runaway military-industrial complex: The power of an informed electorate.
“We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,” President Eisenhower said. “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
“Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
The Epoch Times has requested comment from the White House, State Department, and Pentagon.
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