The U.S. Senate passed a major foreign aid bill recently by a vote of 70-29. This bill will require spending $95.3 billion that we do not have.
We have a national debt that is approaching $35 trillion, a figure so huge that no one can humanly comprehend how much that is.
The Congressional Budget Office has projected that our interest payments on this debt will be $870 billion in 2024 and $951 billion in 2025.
The interest on this debt comes out to over $2,600 per person for this year and over $106,000 per person on the total debt.
This has come about because the easiest thing in the world to do is to spend other people’s money. Also, no politician likes to say no to anyone.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there has been about 60% inflation since 1988 when I was first elected to Congress.
The things that the federal government subsidizes, like medical care and college tuition, have gone up even more. This is because when government subsidizes anything, it removes most of the incentives and pressures to hold down costs and/or operate efficiently.
Also, the cost of housing has exploded because government at all levels has taken so much prosperity out of private ownership, and/or restricted so much development that when houses or apartments are built it can be done only on land that has gone way up in price (and then only on postage-stamp size lots).
Do you see a theme here? As President Reagan used to say, when the government says it wants to help, watch out. The people get hurt; only government bureaucrats and government contractors are helped.
That brings me back to the latest foreign aid bill. I really appreciate Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee leading a 5½ day filibuster against this bill.
I told the News-Sentinel that I believed close to 90% of the people in East Tennessee would have opposed giving Ukraine $61 billion more on top of the $114 billion that Congress had previously approved for that country.
Ukraine was rated as one of the most corrupt governments in the world just prior to the start of the current war.
The basics of a peace agreement had been reached a little over two years ago until it was stopped by U.S. and British leaders. Actually, it was probably stopped by the very powerful influence in the biggest countries of the military-industrial complex.
I wrote in this column a few months ago that when it comes to action by big government, here and in other countries, you should just “follow the money.”
Anytime someone opposes spending huge amounts of money on foreign wars or doing anything in other countries, they are attacked as being isolationists. This is so false. No one wants to put up a wall around the U.S.
We should have trade and tourism and cultural and educational exchanges with other countries. But we should stop spending money we do not have just because giant defense contractors want more money or because bureaucrats in every department want offices in every country so they can justify foreign travel and feel more powerful and important.
The bill also contains $14.1 billion more for Israel when we already give that country $3.8 billion each year for military spending and billions more spread out over almost every appropriations bill.
It also includes $4.8 billion for Asia, mostly for Taiwan. I have nothing at all against either Israel or Taiwan, but both are in far better financial shape fiscally than is the U.S.
I was so disappointed in President George W. Bush. I was so excited about him when he ran for president because he campaigned saying over and over that we needed a more humble foreign policy and we needed to stop doing nation building (of other nations). Then he followed a neo-con, globalist foreign policy his entire time in the White House.
And I am disappointed in the 22 Republican Senators (some of whom were friends of mine in the House) who voted for this foreign aid bill. They all ran as America-first Trump supporters but changed when they got to the Senate.
Mitch McConnell and Mitt Romney both begged for Trump’s support when they were campaigning and have since attacked him repeatedly so they can be praised by the national media.
Reprinted with author’s permission from The Knoxville Focus.
