The House of Representatives has passed a bill allocating $14.3 billion in military aid funding for Israel. However, the bill does not include funding for Ukraine. In fact, it falls short of the $106 billion that Biden had requested [00:00:18] in his military funding proposal. That included a whole host of other things, including just $100 million in humanitarian aid to Palestine, efforts to bolster our southern border. And there were some other elements which we'll get to in just a moment. [00:00:34] But first, let's talk about the bill itself that passed and what the Biden administration is now threatening to do. So new speaker Mike Johnson, a theocrat, if you will. Package required that the emergency aid be offset with cuts in government spending elsewhere. [00:00:51] That tack established the new House GOP's conservative leadership, but it also turned what would typically be a bipartisan vote into one dividing Democrats and Republicans. So there were many issues that Democrats had with this legislation. [00:01:09] Ultimately, it passed because Republicans control the House, and there were enough Democrats to support the bill that it did, in fact, pass. We don't know if it's going to pass in the Senate. We're going to wait and see. But Democrats had an issue with the fact that it didn't include funding for Ukraine. And more importantly, the GOP in the House was not kidding. [00:01:28] They plan on cutting funding that was allocated for the IRS to ensure that they were auditing millionaire tax dodgers, but that would actually make this bill far more expensive, because the whole point of bolstering the IRS with that money was to [00:01:45] ensure that we're collecting the revenue that the federal government is justified in collecting from these tax dodgers. So with that said, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that by cutting the 14.3 billion from the IRS in order to fund 14.3 billion toward [00:02:04] military aid to Israel would mean that the outcome would actually cost $26 billion, since the money for the IRS was supposed to bring in about $12.5 billion. So this is actually going to amount to additional lost revenue. [00:02:20] Now, Biden has said that he would veto the bill, which was approved 226 to 196, with 12 Democrats joining most Republicans on a largely party line vote. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has warned that the stunningly unserious bill [00:02:38] has no chances in the Senate. But the vote was apparently difficult for some Democrats, mostly because of some pressure coming from AIPAC Democrats who wanted to support Israel and may have trouble explaining the tradeoff to constituents, [00:02:53] especially as the large AIPAC lobby and other groups encourage passage. In all, only two Republicans oppose the bill. Now, Democrats are also trying to get Republicans to comply by arguing that this Partizan move is only going to delay military funding to Israel, which [00:03:13] seemingly is the only thing Republican lawmakers care about when it comes to, you know, a military aid package. And so if Biden vetoes it or if it fails in the Senate, then the House is back to the drawing board. And that's going to delay the money to Israel, considering what's currently [00:03:28] transpiring in Gaza. I'm not concerned about that at all. But I can understand why politicians who take campaign contributions from AIPAC would be concerned about that. Now, just real quick, a refresher on what the Biden administration had wanted. [00:03:44] It was a $106 billion proposal. They did not want to pass the provisions piecemeal. They wanted to pass one omnibus bill. That is not what the Republican Party wants to do. It included $100 million in humanitarian aid for Gaza, [00:03:59] while, of course, also asking for 14.3 billion in military funding for Israel. It also had money for Ukraine's defense against Russia, border security and also efforts to counter China. So, Brett, I do think that if Democrats are really going to do [00:04:17] what they're threatening to do, which is vote down this legislation in the Senate or have Biden veto it, they are they are right that it's going to delay the military funding to Israel. Again, I'm not really concerned about that. I think that that money should have strings attached, considering [00:04:33] what's happening in Gaza right now with the insanely high civilian deaths. - But what is your take on all of this? - There's a lot in it, right? My general take is like, the Republican Party is back, baby. It is back in action. It is a way to kind of appeal to the evangelicals in the room who need enough [00:04:51] Jews to live in Israel for the apocalypse, and then also at the same time, they like to say stuff like, aren't you tired of paying taxes? But the plans that they put in place only save money for super rich people, and not the normie or the evangelical folks in their group. [00:05:08] Like. And so just to there's a lot in there, right, for the IRS thing specifically, that is, it is the literal worst way to save money because it costs you money. It is as dumb as saying, I want to save money. [00:05:23] Time is money. I use time by going to my job. Okay, what if I just don't go to my job? I am saving so much time and so much money and then you get fired and you don't make any money at all. Like that's it. The IRS is the thing that makes money for the government. [00:05:41] They cut the funding to it. They're just going to lose it. And they and it exposes the Republicans for the fiscal conservative sham that they put out. And all they want to do is save rich people money. They really don't care about the deficit when it comes to to large scale funding like this. [00:05:57] You're 1,000% right about that, right? The whole fiscal conservative nonsense has always been a joke. I think it's evident in the fact that Republicans were willing to pass Trump's tax cuts for the rich, which amounted to $2 trillion. The deficit exploded under Donald Trump's watch. [00:06:15] So don't believe them at all when they claim to be fiscal conservatives. But I also want to just say, look, oftentimes we talk about how lawmakers want to protect their wealthy donors. Don't forget about the fact that these guys are pretty wealthy themselves. [00:06:31] So not only would it benefit their wealthy donors, it would benefit the very lawmakers who are trying to gut the IRS of the resources that were allocated to the IRS during the Inflation Reduction Act. By the way, the Biden administration already agreed to cutting 20 billion [00:06:48] from the 80 billion that was previously allocated for the IRS, and he agreed to that in order to make a deal with Kevin McCarthy to lift the debt ceiling. And the other aspect of this is this is like a little bit of Matt Gaetz, like Matt Gaetz, Matt Gaetz having won some stuff [00:07:06] in the speaker debate, this is him. He was the piecemeal guy. He's the guy who's like, we should vote for every bit of funding, one at a time. That will delay the process for getting stuff, but they are not doing piecemeal. You need to know that. [00:07:22] And in doing so, they're giving an out to Democrats when it comes to getting their name on paper for funding for Israel, it is intentionally confusing to the average person. No, none of us have experienced something like this before. The average voter doesn't know what to do with this. [00:07:37] And so a lot of the Democrats who are involved with it are like the Republicans think it's a great thing because they're looking at Democrats and be like, are you not going to support Israel? And do you want more money to the IRS, which everyone hates? [00:07:52] So the Democrats are like, I don't think anyone really understands that. I don't think you're going to be able to message that effectively. I'm going to put out a lot of messaging like this. This is an insane thing they're trying, which slows down getting money to the people who we are pledged to defend. [00:08:08] And it doesn't get to all. And I think the main stream media gambit right now, and the main narrative gambit is that all the stuff that you see talked about a lot of places when it comes to the specifics of Israel-Palestine, they just don't think that's gotten through to that many people. So they're trying to get everybody is trying to get it back to the status quo. [00:08:26] And the the gates element of the Republican Party is trying this new thing with piecemealing some, some funding for Israel and taking it away from the IRS. So I want to move on to why I actually think voting on the various provisions [00:08:42] from Biden's proposal piecemeal. Is better than doing one large piece of legislation. And it's because of this story that was recently reported by In These Times. They looked at the legislation and they caught something that we didn't even catch [00:09:00] as we were reading about the bill or the proposal from Biden. So they found that basically, Biden in his proposal has requested this loophole on arms sales to Israel. Now, right now, it's unclear whether Republicans included that in [00:09:17] the legislation they passed in the House. And if they did, luckily Biden's going to veto it and it's unlikely going to pass in the Senate. However, this loophole would effectively give Israel a check to purchase $3.5 billion in arms in complete secrecy. [00:09:35] And I want to be clear, this is in addition to the $14.3 billion. Okay, so it's buried in the $106 billion supplemental National Security funding request by the white House. Here are the exact details. As part of 3.5 billion earmarked for foreign military financing funding [00:09:55] for Israel, the executive branch sought permission to unilaterally blanket approve the future sale of military equipment and weapons like ballistic missiles and artillery ammunition to Israel without notifying Congress. [00:10:11] So this provision, if it gets passed, would essentially bypass our system of checks and balances. Israel would be able to do this without Congress even knowing about what kind of weapons they're buying and what they're using the money for when they're using the money. So this means that the Israeli government would be able to purchase up to $3.5 [00:10:30] billion in military articles and services in complete secrecy. The House included the waiver language in a bill that splits off Israeli military. They did include it. My bad. So they did include this in the Israeli military aid from the rest of the package. [00:10:46] So I wanted to look into the actual language and find that part of the provision, and I failed to do that, but guess it is included. So I want to now go to a video featuring that State Department official who actually ended up quitting recently over the white House rushing weapons to Israel. [00:11:04] His name is Josh Paul, and he sheds more light on what this kind of provision really means. Let's watch. The language in the supplemental request that the Biden administration set up sent up would remove the requirement to notify Congress of any arms sales [00:11:22] conducted under that funding. Typically, there is a process where for any major defense sale, Congress is notified of it, and there's actually a process prior to the formal notification where Congress gets to ask questions, poke, prod, delay, and then, if it wishes to oppose the sale, can raise a joint resolution of disapproval on the floor. [00:11:40] What this proposal would do is essentially destroy all of that, remove all of that, remove that congressional oversight, remove that congressional ability to object. It is unprecedented. I've never seen anything like it, and I cannot imagine that the committees of jurisdiction are viewing it very favorably, because it [00:11:56] is just such a damaging approach that also sets a horrible precedent for other countries with whom future administrations may decide they don't want Congress to be involved. He also told in These Times that frankly, it's an insult to congressional oversight prerogatives. [00:12:12] It's also redundant with existing laws. Paul says the white House can unilaterally approve foreign military sales in emergency situations, but must notify Congress and provide a detailed justification. The Israel waiver does not require any communication with Congress. [00:12:30] And Paul says that. So this doesn't actually reduce the time. It just reduces the oversight. It removes that mechanism for Congress to actually understand what is being transferred at the time it is being transferred. And so, look, you would assume that members of Congress [00:12:47] who vote in favor of this know about it, and they're okay with it. But I'm not so sure about that. And if they are okay with it, the real question is then why? Why are you working for government if you don't believe in our system of government, [00:13:02] which is supposed to include a system of checks and balances? - Go ahead. - Brett. I know because you want a paycheck and you like being in power, like it really is. There's two reasons to vote. The one of those reasons is you can claim ignorance. You didn't know. [00:13:19] It's not just the white House saying, let me get past Congress. It's Congress. People being like, make it. So when someone asks me and this is for anything, not Israel, if it gets applied in the future, it's like I just didn't know. And there's a certain aspect of this story that's like, this is just like a new [00:13:35] headline about things that happen anyway, because like, everybody, please tell me the last time you heard about a large arms sale and it really affected and it really broke through the news when we didn't have waivers for it. - I mean, we don't. - We cover it. [00:13:52] But that's what I'm saying is like, for most people and most like oversight committees, like we have Josh watching oversight committees all the time, like most of it, is boring. And if you're going to find an exciting thing out of it, you need to subscribe to YouTube.com. Slash investigates reports. We'll get it to you. [00:14:07] But the fact is, like most people don't see any of that. It's fine. No one thinks that it's a transparent process anyway. Look, I think it's a big problem that even before this proposal, there's a lack of transparency. [00:14:23] I mean, that's something that we should be working to fix. And just because we live in a country full of terrible wannabe journalists who don't actually want to do journalism, doesn't mean that there should be there shouldn't be transparency in the process. Right? We should know, like, forget Congress. [00:14:40] I mean, the American people should also be fully aware of where this money is going, how it's being spent, especially when we're talking about American arms that are being sold to other countries, or money that we're giving to other countries to buy American arms and use it however they please, as Israel's been doing. [00:14:59] Right. There are Americans who have a huge moral issue with that. I'm included in that group of people. So I have a huge problem with this. And look, the the fact that the Biden administration is trying to add an extra layer of, you know, secrecy, to make this process even more opaque [00:15:18] than it already is, is a huge problem. And I'm not going to pretend like it's not. Right for me. It's like, this is one of those stories that is in the news right now because of the Israel-Palestine thing. And what you kind of mentioned is it could be one of the people, the guy [00:15:34] that you mentioned is this could expand to anything at all in the future and, and make it further opaque in a pentagon with which fails its audits every year. Exactly. That's that's the scary, scary thing about it to me. [00:15:51] And one other thing I'll mention is. Separately, the House passed a resolution now on its face. It just appears as a resolution condemning anyone who anyone in the United States who shows any support for Hamas, which, look, I despise Hamas and I despise [00:16:11] anyone who has provided, provided cover or justified what Hamas has done. Slaughtering civilians is never okay and it never leads to any success. I mean, look at what's happening to innocent Palestinians right now in retaliation for what Hamas did. But anyway, putting that aside, I don't think that the government should try to [00:16:30] put out these, like, statements as a form of like punishment against people who have political views, who differ from them. So that's point number one. But aside from that, what's being kind of hidden in that resolution is a provision that states that the United States will try to stop [00:16:48] Iran at with any means necessary if they are developing a nuclear weapon. And it appears that they are setting the stage for justification for a war with Iran. And that scares me. And it's just so funny how few outlets have really reported on that provision [00:17:06] in the resolution, because, you know, the thing about Hamas is non-binding, like the government cannot punish you for your political speech. But read a little further and then you'll see the provision in regard to going after Iran with any means necessary if they're developing a nuclear weapon. [00:17:22] Any thoughts on that for that? It's like those are the hardest ones to interpret. Right. Because is that a justification? And historically, these are hard ones to interpret because you don't want to say, you know what, Iran go go nuclear, bro. [00:17:37] You don't want to say that, and you don't want to give any indication afterwards. So there's certain things that happen, I think, in the in the very horrifying and terrible, maybe the world will explode. Discussions about international relations, different posturings to other nations [00:17:52] that are trying to exert influence in a region. And you want to protect your own where like, you know, afterwards, of course, Biden's going to go give me a hug after the attack on the seventh, but over time, you have to. It's the developments after that that are the most in in interesting and terrifying [00:18:11] and maybe edifying and give you a sense of relief based on how they develop. But they're going to say stuff like, yeah, at any means, by any means necessary, because otherwise Iran or replace that with any other global power will just go take what the defense gives them. [00:18:26] Yeah, I mean, we'll see if a resolution will serve as a deterrent for Iran. I'm terrified about what the future holds. I'm I'm terrified about an expansion of this war. The leader of Hezbollah gave his first speech in this entire conflict and stopped [00:18:43] short of committing to expanding the war. So I guess that's good news for now. But if things continue the way that they are, I'm worried that. The pressure from Arab citizens in these Arab countries is they're going to cave to it. [00:18:59] So I hope that it doesn't get to that point, but things look pretty dire at the moment. Thanks for watching. If you become a member, you get to watch all this ad free. Except for, of course, this ad still. Hit the join button below.