On the homepage, Noah reminds Republicans of reality: They control only one chamber of Congress, and just barely. They don’t get to dictate the terms of Israel aid (or of anything else). Speaker Mike Johnson’s proposal to send $14.3 billion to Israel by cutting $14.3 billion from the IRS won’t pass the Senate, and it might not even pass the House.
Much of the Democrats’ expansion of IRS funding should be repealed. There’s a strong argument for increasing funding to improve taxpayer services and modernize technology, but only $8 billion of the $80 billion in extra funding was for those purposes. The vast majority of the spending is for increased enforcement (read: audits, which will be on middle- and lower-class taxpayers in addition to upper-class ones) and general operations (read: Democrats paying off the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents IRS workers). The IRS doesn’t need the $14.3 billion that Johnson wants to take from it, and the American people wouldn’t miss it if it was gone.
But that simply doesn’t have anything to do with aid to Israel, and America’s national-security interests should take precedence in a national-security bill. Democrats control the Senate, any bill will have to pass the Senate to actually help Israel, and Democrats aren’t going to vote for the IRS cuts. Despite the radical Left’s best efforts to break it, there’s still broad bipartisan support for Israel, and a bill providing aid to Israel without the IRS provisions would pass both the House and the Senate with few dissenters.
Concerns about the extra spending are reasonable, but this instance perfectly illustrates why fiscal responsibility in times of relative peace matters. World affairs change in ways that are always unexpected and often disastrous. That’s why it pays to have extra money saved up from the good times to support America’s interests in the bad times.
Politicians in Washington have been spending recklessly and refusing to do anything about the spiraling national debt for years, at times when Israel wasn’t under attack. To become penny-pinchers now, over $14.3 billion in a federal budget of more than $6 trillion, after Israel was the site of the worst violence against Jews since the Holocaust, is an error in judgment.
And as Noah notes, Johnson’s pay-for doesn’t even work, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The forgone revenue from tax enforcement outweighs the spending cut, leading to a modest increase in the debt. It’s paying for a spending increase with a tax cut — in other words, not paying for it at all.
It would be one thing if Republicans were at least united behind Johnson’s approach, but they are not. Several Senate Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, are hesitant to separate Israel aid from Ukraine aid. At least two House Republicans, Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene, have already announced they will not vote for any foreign aid for Israel (or for Ukraine). Johnson is working with just as narrow a House majority as Kevin McCarthy was. With no Democratic support (which is a safe bet given the IRS provisions) and only a few more GOP defections, Chuck Schumer won’t even be able to reject the bill because it won’t pass the House.
Johnson’s first major legislative move has been an error, and he should change course. Congress shouldn’t be arguing about tax enforcement when Israel’s security is the question at hand. And this episode should chasten Congress to get spending under control so it doesn’t have to scrounge around for offsets when global terrorism rears its ugly head.