The House Freedom Caucus issued a stern reprimand over House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) stand-alone Israel aid bill, releasing a letter on Sunday titled, “Support Israel Without Bankrupting America.”
The conservative bloc compared the weekend bill with the “fully paid-for” November bill Johnson passed in support of Israel, his “most principled action taken to date.” But now, according to the House Freedom Caucus, the U.S. will be forced to borrow money to help its ally, adding to the U.S.’s national deficit.
“It is extremely disappointing that the Speaker is now surrendering to perceived pressure to move an even larger but now unpaid for Israel package — reversing course on his stance to require new supplemental spending to be offset,” the group wrote in its letter.
Johnson announced the bill on Saturday, with a vote likely to come in the next few days. The bill is meant to counteract the Senate’s bipartisan Ukraine-border package, released Sunday evening, which House Republicans have criticized, preferring instead to vote on sending resources to the U.S.-Mexico border, Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan separately.
However, Johnson’s Israel legislation does not include spending cuts, much to the ire of the House Freedom Caucus, which frequently emphasizes the need to cut down on spending.
“… America should not, and does not have to, borrow to support Israel,” the caucus said, adding that “it is particularly troubling” that “we are simultaneously taxing and borrowing to finance Hamas, as well as funding all of Joe Biden’s policies endangering the American people such as his unprecedented border crisis.”
The group suggested that the money for Israel could come from cutting funding for the United Nations, repealing the expansion of the IRS, removing the Department of Commerce’s “slush fund,” and getting rid of “leftist climate change tax credits.”
In announcing the omission of any spending cuts in the stand-alone bill, Johnson condemned Democrats for “refus[ing] to consider that offset to support Israel (even though they agreed to additional cuts to the IRS to pay for their domestic priorities in the final appropriations topline).” He also said the Senate bill would be “dead on arrival.”
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While Johnson won all the votes of Republicans when he was elected to the speaker’s chair last October, he has found problems similar to those of his predecessor, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. In working across the aisle on several occasions, Johnson has received the frustration of several hard-line Republicans, such as those within the House Freedom Caucus who want to see changes in the government’s spending.
“Conservatives should not be forced to choose between borrowing money to support our special friend Israel or honoring our commitment to end unpaid supplemental spending that exacerbate our nation’s unsustainable fiscal crisis and further risks our ability to respond to future crises,” the caucus concluded in its letter.
