Rand Paul Denies Ever Proposing to Cut Federal Aid to Israel, Except…
Senator Rand Paul said today that he never supported cutting federal aid to Israel. He said, “I haven’t really proposed that in the past.” The only problem with that is Paul did, in fact, propose that in 2011, and argued for it in more than one interview. (UPDATE: Paul’s office responds below.)
Paul told Yahoo News reporter Chris Moody that “Israel has always been a strong ally of ours and I appreciate that. I voted just this week to give money—more money—to the Iron Dome, so don’t mischaracterize my position on Israel.”
As Moody noted, however, there’s just one little snag there. Back in 2011, Paul appeared on CNN to talk about a proposal of his to end all foreign aid. Wolf Blitzer specifically asked him, “You want to end all foreign aid as well, is that right?”
Paul responded, “Yeah,” and continued on to cite a poll finding the majority of Americans agree we’re spending too much on foreign aid.
Here’s the relevant portion of their conversation, in which Blitzer presses Paul on whether he’s including Israel in that list of nations he wants to cut off federal aid to:
BLITZER: What about the two billion or three billion that goes every year to Israel? You want to eliminate that as well?
PAUL: I think what you have to do is you have to look. When you send foreign aid, you actually quite a bit to Israel’s enemies, Islamic nations around Israel get quite a bit of foreign aid, too.
BLITZER: Egypt gets almost the same amount.
PAUL: Almost the same amount, so really you have to ask yourself, are we funding an arms race on both sides? I also have a lot of sympathy and respect for Israel as a democratic nation, as a, you know, a fountain of piece and a fountain of democracy within the Middle East.
But at the same time, I don’t think funding both sides of an arm race, particularly when we’ve got to borrow the money from China to send it to someone else. We just can’t do it anymore. The debt is all consuming and it threatens our well-being as a country.
BLITZER: All right, so just to be precise, end all foreign aid including the foreign aid to Israel as well. Is that right?
PAUL: Yes.
Paul also said in the same year, “I think they’re an important ally, but I also think that their per capita income is greater than probably three-fourths of the rest of the world. Should we be giving free money or welfare to a wealthy nation? I don’t think so.”
Watch that 2011 CNN clip below:
Update- August 5th, 2:08 pm: Paul’s office released a statement today clarifying the senator’s position on the issue. You can read the full statement here:
“Senator Rand Paul has never proposed any legislation that targeted Israel’s aid and just last week voted to continue and increase funding to the State of Israel. Sen. Paul is a strong supporter of the Jewish state of Israel. In 2011, Sen. Paul proposed a budget resolution that did not include certain foreign assistance programs in an effort to balance the budget in five years.
Subsequent budget proposals made by Sen. Paul have included up to $5 billion for foreign assistance to account for U.S.-Israel security interests.
Sen. Paul’s position was exactly what Prime Minister Netanyahu said to Congress on July 10, 1996 and May 24, 2011 – Israel will be better off when it does not have to count on anyone else for its protection.Sen. Paul has attempted several times this year to pass the Stand with Israel Act. The bill would cut off the flow of U.S. taxpayer dollars to the Palestinian Authority if it were allied with Hamas. Last month, he issued a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee requesting committee action on the Stand with Israel Act.”
[image via screengrab]
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