Congress Doesn't Care
Their top priority continues to be shoveling money into Defense Contractor's wallets to enrich Washington elites. Nothing else matters.
Last September, before the brutal October 7th Hamas attacks on Israel, a government shutdown was looming. The last minute deal that Speaker McCarthy struck with his Democratic colleagues in the House kept the government open, but lacked the aid for Ukraine for which the Biden administration had been pleading desperately to pass. Although reports are that Speaker McCarthy had promised a vote to increase the total funding by the US to Ukraine from a staggering $113B to an eye-piercing, wallet-busting $175B (keep in mind this is all borrowed money we don’t have), the Speaker was soon ousted and Congress was rudderless.
During this pause of business in the House, while Republicans there scrambled awkwardly to find new leadership, the Hamas attacks happened. Soon after, the President visited Israel, was snubbed by Arab leaders and returned home to request over $100B for aid to Ukraine and Israel. What was little noticed at the time was that the President’s request, once forwarded to Congress on October 20th, included $11B in funding for “border security and migrant matters.” The President envisioned this money to provide more support personnel to process illegal crossers faster with aid, additional shelter and healthcare, and additional judges to process their claims faster.
But the $100B in “emergency supplemental spending” had major head winds, the most immediate being that there was no Speaker of the House to move the legislation forward. More importantly, there was no public support for additional aid to Ukraine. Meanwhile the border crisis, having spiraled out of control since President Biden took office, was finally becoming a national story and the public wanted action - specifically more done by the Administration to stop illegal crossings at the border.
At that time, a plan was hatched. In November, the Senate announced it was negotiating the request to produce a bill. The parties negotiated in secret, and never included the new Speaker Mike Johnson nor any House Republicans in the negotiating process.
Four months later, the President’s strategy to tie foreign aid and border security together, negotiated secretly by Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, Kyrsten Sinema, Chris Murphy and the poor patsy James Lankford, died a remarkable death after just hours in public. It was a stunning blow to the President’s and Senate leadership’s plan. The cynical ploy to get corrupt Ukraine funding by offering token measures to fix some problems with the immigration process but not addressing illegal crossings at all, had backfired. That did not stop the media from blaming the entire debacle on House Republicans who played no part in the plot.
In September, in November and today, when asked, the American public does not list the war in Ukraine nor aid to any foreign country as a top concern. Indeed, here are the top problems for Americans according to Statista, January 15, 2024:
In what may be the most ironic non-irony, please note the top two issues: poor leadership in government and immigration. Foreign aid and policy are a distant tenth place, with one fifth the concern of the top two. The American people are focused on solving our border crisis with new leadership. Full stop.
But our Congress is not. After their lukewarm attempt to tack on immigration reforms that do not address the immediate crisis, the Senate has completely dropped the issue and moved ahead with their Ukraine aid. It is clear by these actions that the money for Ukraine was, is and always will be their first priority. Have you noticed that the pressure on President Biden to reverse his ill-conceived border policies has completely disappeared from the discourse?
Why would the Senate do such a thing? Well, the person who comes in third in every national poll for President of the United States - Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. - has some answers. Take a look:
Your government doesn’t care about you and your issues. Congress doesn’t care about the border crisis. The President is not lifting a finger to solve the squeeze on jobs and wages. (Recent analysis shows that all of the “stunning” job gains have gone to foreign-born workers since 2020 -see chart at bottom.) Our “leaders” are all working to enrich themselves and their friends at BlackRock and American Defense Manufacturers.
As RFK Jr says, they don’t even try to hide it any more. They do it right out in the open and they don’t care. They give us fake issues to fight about while they rob us blind to enrich themselves. No one cares.
