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Home > Congress' Gargantuan New Military Spending Bill Forks Over
Unprecedented Sums to Israel and Ukraine
Congress' Gargantuan New Military Spending Bill Forks Over Unprecedented
Sums to Israel and Ukraine
By Max Blumenthal [1] / AlterNet [2]
September 20, 2017, 7:50 AM GMT
Buried deep in the text of the mammoth National Defense Authorization Act
(NDAA) is a gargantuan money dump into the Israeli defense industry, with
$705 million specifically earmarked for "US-Israel missile defense
cooperation." The funding represents a full 1/100th of the whopping $700
billion military spending package, and a staggering $558 million increase
from what President Donald Trump had originally requested.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the main arm of the pro-Israel
lobby in Washington, reacted with elation [3] at news of the funding,
hailing it as a powerful shot in the arm for the Israeli arms industry.
AIPAC singled out the bipartisan leadership of senators John McCain and Jack
Reed for praise, thanking the duo for the record level of American taxpayer
support for Israeli missile systems and research and development.
Approved by the Senate with almost total bipartisan consensus, the NDAA
represents an $80 billion surge in military spending, $26 billion more than
Trump originally requested. The bill puts funding for the military at parity
with the spending levels of the George W. Bush era, when the so-called war
on terror was at its height. Only four Senate Democrats voted against the
bill.
As reporter Alex Emmons noted, the colossal increase in military funding
could have financed Sen. Bernie Sanders' proposal for free public college
[4] for all Americans, with $33 billion to spare for additional social
programs. But in Washington, funneling billions into the pockets of
contractors like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon takes precedence over nice
things like a functional education system.
Alongside funding for Israel, the NDAA budgeted unprecedented funding [5]
for supposedly defensive weapons for the Ukrainian military, which has been
locked in a destabilizing conflict with Russian-backed separatists since a
U.S.-backed coup toppled its democratically elected government in 2014. 1.4
million Ukrainians [6] have been internally displaced by the conflict, and
with new weapons on the battlefield, many more are likely to be forced to
flee their homes.
The $500 million earmarked for Ukrainian military will also cover [7] the
treatment of its soldiers in American hospitals, including "transportation,
lodging, meals, and other appropriate non-medical support in connection with
such treatment."
While Trump sets massive sums of American taxpayer dollars aside to provide
Ukrainian troops with first-class medical care, his administration has
proposed [8] cutting some $800 billion from Medicaid and other healthcare
programs servicing poor and working-class Americans. If the $500 million
reserved for Ukraine's military were restored to the budget, it would cover
almost all of the cuts Trump has proposed to the National Heart, Lung and
Blood Institute, which conducts critical research on heart and lung disease.
Providing new, U.S.-made weapons to the Ukrainian military has been a key
priority [9] for Kurt Volker, whose role at the State Department is supposed
to entail ending the conflict in Ukraine. Besides serving as Trump's man in
Kiev, Volker is a neoconservative operative currently listed [10] as the
executive director of the McCain Institute for International Affairs. His
organization is a faux humanitarian initiative launched by John McCain, the
senator who was the driving force behind this year's NDAA. The McCain
Institute is funded [11] by a collection of oligarchs, repressive
governments like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the BGR group, whose
designated lobbyist, Ed Rogers, is a lobbyist for Raytheon, an arms
contractor that is certain to reap a massive windfall profit from the NDAA.
Raytheon also stands to benefit handsomely from the funding earmarked in the
bill for Israeli missile systems. It has partnered with the state-backed
Israeli arms firm Rafael, to produce the Iron Dome System, which has been
deployed primarily to deter homemade rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, the
besieged Palestinian coastal enclave.
The initial 2014 announcement [12] of a $149 million contract for Raytheon
to produce the Tamir missiles launched by Iron Dome batteries was hailed as
"big news for owners of Raytheon stock." If the NDAA passes in anything
close to its current form, arms industry stockholders could see their stock
skyrocket to previously unimaginable heights.
A week before the NDAA vote, AIPAC announced [3] it had sent 50 members of
Congress from both parties on an all-expenses-paid junket to Israel. These
lawmakers will soon vote on the House version of the titanic military
spending bill. Having just returned from a lavish propaganda tour, they are
unlikely to whittle it down at the expense of their generous foreign host.
Max Blumenthal is a senior editor of the Grayzone Project at AlterNet, and
the award-winning author of Goliath [13], Republican Gomorrah [14], and The
51 Day War [15]. He is the co-host of the podcast, Moderate Rebels [16].
Follow him on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal [17].
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Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [18]
[19]
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Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/military-spending-israel-ukraine
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/max-blumenthal
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
http://www.aipac.org/learn/resources/aipac-publications/publication?pubpath=
PolicyPolitics/Press/AIPAC%20Statements/2017/09/Senate%20Supports%20Funding%
20for%20US%20Israel%20Missile%20Defense%20Cooperation
[4]
https://theintercept.com/2017/09/18/the-senates-military-spending-increase-a
lone-is-enough-to-make-public-college-free/
[5]
https://www.unian.info/politics/2141836-us-senate-allocates-500-mln-to-ukrai
ne-authorizes-lethal-aid-poroshenko.html
[6]
http://www.internal-displacement.org/europe-the-caucasus-and-central-asia/uk
raine/figures-analysis
[7] https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/1519/text
[8]
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/05/23/529654114/medical-resear
ch-health-care-face-deep-cuts-in-trump-budget
[9]
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-volker-sending-arms-russia-conflict/28637079
.html
[10] https://www.mccaininstitute.org/staff/kurt-volker/
[11]
http://reason.com/blog/2017/07/07/mccain-institutes-volker-headed-to-state
[12]
http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-firm-raytheon-wins-149m-iron-dome-contract/
[13]
http://www.amazon.com/Goliath-Life-Loathing-Greater-Israel/dp/1568586345
[14] http://republicangomorrah.com/
[15] https://www.amazon.com/51-Day-War-Ruin-Resistance/dp/156858511X
[16] http://moderaterebelsradio.com/
[17] http://twitter.com/maxblumenthal
[18] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=Typo on Congress' Gargantuan
New Military Spending Bill Forks Over Unprecedented Sums to Israel and
Ukraine
[19] http://www.alternet.org/
[20] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
