Ryan: US budget constraints affecting Israel aid talks
Cost of social programs makes spending difficult, Speaker says
WASHINGTON – Negotiations over a new defense package for Israel are taking place in a challenging budgetary environment for the US, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said on Thursday, reflecting on his recent trip to the region.
Budget constraints are thus affecting talks between Washington and Jerusalem over the new defense agreement, formally known as a memorandum of understanding, set to replace an expiring, decadeold commitment of US aid worth $3 billion a year.
Obama administration officials say they are prepared to negotiate with Israel the largest defense package of its kind in history, despite acknowledging fiscal challenges.
Over breakfast in the speaker’s office, Ryan said it “goes without saying” that the cost of expensive social programs is putting pressure on Congress to limit discretionary spending.
“We have budget constraints, like anybody else does,” Ryan said, asked by The Jerusalem Post whether the negotiations would be affected by budget constraints.
“Our budget is constrained because we’re [the US is] not dealing with the autopilot nature of our budget,” he said. “We’re not dealing with mandatory spending. And because we’re not dealing with mandatory spending, we have shrinking fiscal space for discretionary spending. And this stuff [foreign aid] is discretionary spending.”
“There’s not going to be enough money left for discretionary spending if we don’t fix this entitlement problem,” the speaker continued.
Israel is requesting roughly $5b. per year in the new package, while the US is pitching between $3.4b. and $4b. “In Israel’s view, the lower end of that range would actually represent a decrease in aid, since the 2007 MOU [memorandum of understanding] would have amounted to $3.6b. per year if one factors in inflation,” said David Makovsky, a former senior adviser on Secretary of State John Kerry’s Middle East peace team.
Last month, on a visit to Israel, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) told The Jerusalem Post the US would be as generous as possible given the circumstances.
Ryan outlined his foreign policy as that of a realist seeking peace through strength – a position that requires robust economic growth at home in order for these foreign aid programs to remain viable, he said.
“We give $1.3b. to Egypt. I don’t think we should take that away. I think right now they need that assistance,” he added.
Ryan recently visited Israel on his first trip abroad as
speaker of the house. The trip was enlightening, he said, as US allies across the region expressed deep concern with the extreme “retrenchment” and “Middle East fatigue” of the Obama administration, as well as alarm over the rhetoric of Donald J. Trump, front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination.
Trump’s plan to ban foreign Muslims from the US “got under my skin,” Ryan said. He was thanked abroad for rebuking the policy proposal as un-American.
Neither a hawk nor a dove, Ryan rejected the notion that you can “fortress America,” or that the loose application of American military power can solve the problems of the Middle East. He seemed enthusiastic at the prospect of a Saudi-led Muslim coalition of forces that would take the fight to Islamic State on the ground in Syria.
The speaker said that a new MOU with Israel is “very important” for regional security, for the maintenance of Israel’s qualitative military edge, and for the national security of the United States.
“I don’t know what the numbers are going to be – that’s between the administration and the Israeli government – but that’s pretty darn important,” Ryan said. •