How The Biden Administration Messed Up Its Own Foreign Aid Request
Biden administration has tried to push large foreign aid funds for Ukraine and Israel through Congress. They were held up over immigration issues, a domestic foreign policy issue that has nothing to do with the other funds.
I had wondered how that had happened. I had assumed that the Republicans had inserted the issue into the vote on the funds.
But it now turned out that it was the Biden administration itself which put all three issues into one package. This led to the failure of all three measures.
Biden Tied Ukraine Aid to Border Security, and It Backfired on Him – NY Times – Dec 7, 2023
When President Biden sent his request to Congress last month for aid to Ukraine and Israel, he included a request for more money to help with security at the border with Mexico, a sweetener intended to both address a crisis and win over support of Republicans.
But the move has now left Mr. Biden in a box.
By putting the issue on the table, he ignited demands from the right for broad changes to border policy, leaving his own party divided on a topic that many Democrats see as a political vulnerability heading into 2024 and further complicating prospects for top foreign policy priorities.
The White House had negotiated with itself. It had come up with a 'sweetener' to goad the Republicans into agreeing to the fund measures. But that sweetener was not big enough for the Republicans. It thereby proved to be toxic for the whole deal.
What a huge policy failure.
Why put one issue, immigration, that has for decades been disputed between the two parties, into a package with politically unproblematic funds for Israel and only slightly problematic funds for Ukraine? That did not make sense.
It would be nice to know whoever the genius was who had come up with the scheme.
Is it possible that the White House itself was seeking stricter immigration laws but did not dare to say so openly? To then be able to say 'they made me do it'? The question must be asked because stricter immigration laws is what the U.S. will now get:
The president signaled on Wednesday that he was open to further negotiations with Senate Republicans after they blocked his emergency spending bill.
Mr. Biden now faces a difficult choice about how much to throw himself into talks on an issue that for decades has defied efforts to reach bipartisan compromise. And he will have to decide how far to go in giving in to conservative demands that he substantially choke off the number of migrants admitted to the United States while their asylum claims are considered.
I can not assess if the White House still sees this as sensible strategy or if it somehow misjudged the issue that ended in this huge fuck up.
An alternative question is if this was an attempt by the White House to hold up the Ukraine funds as part of a scheme to push the Ukraine towards negotiations with Russia. I first had favored that view but it now seems to be unlikely.
Anyway, politically this is clearly a loss for the Democrats and a huge win for the Republican side:
The White House has received backlash from both sides, highlighting the challenge of reaching a compromise over one of the most polarizing issues in domestic politics.
Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, said in a statement co-signed by 10 other Senate Democrats that “using a one-time spending package to enact these unrelated permanent policy changes sets a dangerous precedent and risks assistance to our international partners.”
Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, spoke for his G.O.P. colleagues on Thursday when he boasted about pushing immigration to the forefront of the national conversation. “It looks like we’ve got the president’s attention,” he said.
Who in the White House is responsible for this mess?
Posted by: alek_a | Dec 10 2023 4:03 utc | 73
You came after me with half baked nonsense, even after I’d finally mastered the HTML?
Ah, the typical progressive leftist arguments in favor of mass immigration: basically taking the moral high ground and blaming evil capitalists for the way our western societies have turned up. All the time probably having a far higher than average income themselves and thus pretty isolated of the horrors of mass immigration at the local level.
I didn’t advocate for ‘mass immigration’, I pointed out that there was a moral obligation to help fellow human beings displaced from war or natural disasters, particularly if you live in the country that is responsible for starting most conflicts. Of course I’m going to blame the evil capitalists for the conditions in western societies, as the evil capitalists are the only people who’ve ever been in control of western societies. I can’t blame communists for the shitty state of western societies as communists have never controlled western societies.
Poor alek, who has to suffer the “horrors of mass migration”. Those Palestinians don’t know suffering like you alek. How do you put up with the Italians who drink those proper little coffees. Don’t worry you can put milk, sugar, caramel and marshmallows in it. How do you put up with the Korean / Indian / Pakistani supermarkets that stay open 24 hours? That work ethic is going to put your good old fashioned white settlers (still technically immigrants) out of business if they insist on 1920’s going to church twice on Sunday and half day closing on a Wednesday for the Klan meeting. How do you survive the horror of the illegal immigrant who will fix your car / mow your lawn / repair your house for 50% of the going rate, this will destroy the way of life for your all American tradesman. It’s a great deal and times are tough, but no true patriot would ever use these services. Would they? Then there’s the African, Asian, Middle Eastern migrants who may well have world class medical, computing, engineering skills, who dress, speak, cook and pray like Africans, Asians, Middle Eastern people – what an affront to your mixed European (still technically immigrant) heritage. And how dare they have families! Same old story, these people leaving their devastated homeland, crossing mountains on foot, crossing oceans by any means, bringing their determination, skills and hard work, might well do you out of a job alek. Especially the neuro-surgeons.
I must challenge your repeated false assertions. Refugees and asylum seekers are not the cause of lower wages and living conditions..lower wages and living conditions are caused by pressure from Wall Street for companies to raise profits by continually cutting labour costs and by both political parties imposing austerity policies as part of the neoliberal dogma to cut public services and reduce spending on infrastructure. Of course the lying bastard politicians will tell you that they’re spending gazillions on infrastructure as buildings and bridges collapse, trains crash daily and your car is destroyed by potholes. Meanwhile corporations and billionaires avoid tax using offshore accounts and trillions of dollars are wasted on MIC procurement rackets typified by NATO. Expensive waste of time, defending no-one, endangering all of us.
Most of these asylum seekers do not qualify – they are economic migrants in fact – but open borders policies and outdated immigration covenants virtually guarantee that they get permanent residence after a while. Once in, never out and also the family gets in (family reunification is the highest contributor to the mass immigration numbers).
Although the West has a lot of blame for wrong choices geopolitically in the past, I am not sure how destroying the way of life via mass immigration benefits anyone except well-off leftist liberals that get their moral itch scratched without much consequences for themselves.
Get into your thick skull, I ain’t no liberal. An asylum seeker is an asylum seeker. A refugee is a refugee. An economic migrant is an economic migrant. They are distinct legal entities. An efficient and well resourced legal system can process every entrant claiming each particular status according to your local law (as the Mexicans processed someone on this thread at the weekend). The laws are made by your lawmaking representatives who are 99.99% the evil capitalists referred to above. You vote for these people based on the bullshit and lies they tell you, so if your country’s immigration system is a mess you’re partly responsible for voting for these people.
Always turn around the question to the leftist moral argument: why dont you open your house to these “refugess” if you are so concerned about them?
oh Alek, your towering intellect, how could I possibly respond to such a question? Would it annoy you if I say that I’ve done that for 25 years? And worry not, if the migrants you’re so afraid of take your job, house, car, pyjamas, it looks like you can always live with Milites, himself a migrant, but so exceptional, he believes in not giving other migrants the opportunity that he was given.
Posted by: Lev Davidovich | Dec 11 2023 9:24 utc | 103
