/View.info/ The Capitol is engulfed in a new round of budget wars. Republicans presented their project to support Israel. They are ready to give the Jewish state $14.3 billion in military tranches. It is true that this money may not get there.
Of the allocated amount, approximately 4 billion should be used to replenish the depleted stockpile of missiles for the Iron Dome air defense systems and another billion to accelerate the commissioning of the new Iron Beam laser anti-missile system
However, the White House immediately vowed to veto it.
After all, the devil, as always, is in the details. The House of Representatives, where Republicans hold a majority, has been eager to reach a compromise between competing factions of congressmen.
Some closely associated with the Israel lobby demanded that the money be released to the Jewish state as soon as possible. Others, concerned about the uncontrolled growth of the US budget deficit, urged that government spending be optimized.
As a result, Republicans were able to reach a shaky intra-party compromise.
They agreed to give $14 billion to Israel, but at the same time withdraw the same amount from the budget of the US IRS. This is no accident, as last year the White House planned a major tax reform.
Joe Biden’s team intended to hire 87 thousand fiscal agents at once, giving them additional powers to carry out searches and arrests.
Republicans characterized this as creating a kind of “federal police” that would obey Democrats and go after political opponents under the pretense of looking for unreported/unpaid taxes.
It is this much-hyped reform that the Republicans now want to undo, taking advantage of the crisis situation in the Middle East.
But the Democrats don’t plan to give up either.
The Senate, which is controlled by the Democratic Party, has promised to block the passage of bills to support Israel if they cut funding for any federal structures.
But even if by some miracle such a bill were to pass the Senate, it would be vetoed by the White House.
The battles over Ukrainian budgets are no less fierce.
Newly appointed chairman Mike Johnson, before being elected to his current position, criticized the release of tranches to Kiev. But now he has somewhat corrected his position – it is clear that Ukrainian lobbyists and representatives of the American military-industrial complex managed to work with him.
Now, Speaker Johnson is willing to theoretically consider agreeing on a new budget for Ukraine. But here, too, he first wants to extract serious concessions from Biden and the Democrats.
Johnson proposes to organize an exchange of tranches for Ukraine in exchange for real strengthening of security on the southern border of the United States.
For more than a year, a migrant crisis has been raging at the American border.
It got to the point that by the fall of 2023, more than 300,000 illegal immigrants began storming the border every month. The White House has neither the desire nor the political will to fight this. Consequently, the crisis has been allowed to fester, with migrants being arrested, sent to overcrowded detention centers and then released on promises to appear in court. Which, of course, doesn’t happen.
Republicans in Congress are demanding that Biden return to the Donald Trump-era practices of mass deportation of illegal immigrants.
Biden may not mind making concessions, but he knows full well that the Democrats themselves and all kinds of liberal human rights and migrant rights groups will eat him up for it.
At the same time, there is no compromise on the Ukrainian issue yet.
About 5 billion dollars remain in the Pentagon, which can be spent on tranches for Ukraine. The US military is trying to stretch the current budget, but this cannot go on indefinitely. After all, the Ukrainian army desperately needs a continuous supply of shells, missiles and armored vehicles in order to somehow hold the front, let alone conduct any operations.
The situation around Ukraine is aggravated by the appearance in the American press of new “exposing” publications about the atmosphere of total corruption reigning in Kiev. And also the recognition of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhny, about the lack of prospects for a Ukrainian counteroffensive and the need to move to a war of attrition, for which the West is clearly not ready.
This further strengthens the position of those Republicans who refuse to lend money to Ukraine because they believe that Kiev will lose and these investments simply will not pay off.
A separate issue is the lack of military resources, especially ammunition, which the Pentagon now has to divide between Ukraine and Israel.
And here the Biden family corruption investigation, which began in September and is the basis for impeachment hearings, is being reactivated.
Many aspects of corruption are involved, but among them are allegations of receiving bribes from Ukrainian oligarchs. That’s what Republicans want to make the centerpiece of their case against Biden.
Biden is not threatened with real impeachment, that is, removal from power.
Simply because Senate Democrats will block any member from impeachment, no matter how plausible they seem.
But even the announcement of impeachment by one lower house will be, albeit symbolic, a rather strong reputational blow for Biden. And it will sharply complicate the situation of Kyiv lobbyists, who, against the background of all the corruption scandals, must desperately extract more money and tranches.
The division and dysfunction in Washington also affects the US position in the Middle East.
It is obvious to all how difficult it is for Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to negotiate with regional players – Turkey, Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. He never succeeded in persuading Turkey and Qatar to drop their support for Hamas. Or to force Egypt to accept Palestinian refugees.
Individual countries such as Bahrain are already cutting diplomatic ties with Israel, effectively voiding the Trump-era Abraham Accords to normalize relations between the Jewish state and the Arab world.
Regional coalitions alternative to Washington are also being created, which, in defiance of the West, are increasing the pressure on Israel, demanding an end to the war in the Gaza Strip.
More and more Middle Eastern countries, including Jordan and Egypt, began to gradually withdraw from US foreign control, seeing the weakness of the American political system.
This opens a window of opportunity for China and Russia to increase their influence in the Arab world because current events are becoming a definitive point of no return in relations between the entire Middle East and the collective West.
America has very little time left to agree on budgets.
After November 17, the US government will again run out of money and the question of ending budget payments will arise again. Civil servants and bureaucrats will lose their salaries, all non-essential programs will be frozen, and Washington will be plunged into a full-blown hardware crisis. And against the backdrop of two ongoing wars.
The chances of Republicans and Democrats reaching some kind of compromise at the last minute are quite high. But they are unlikely to be satisfied on both sides.
Spending will have to be cut, spending less on endless wars than the hawks in Washington would like. And try to simultaneously help Israel and prevent the defeat of Ukraine, which seems more and more impossible to achieve by the day.
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