Dem Rep. Himes: We Can’t Have Policy Priority Pay-For in Israel Bill, It Also Doesn’t Have My Spending Policy Priorities

On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Situation Room,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) stated that it’s “a very dangerous path” to have a pay-for in the Israel aid bill that House Republicans proposed that is “a Democratic policy priority” and that he voted against the bill because it didn’t have Ukraine money and humanitarian aid in it.

Himes said, “Wolf, there [are] a bunch of reasons for the no vote. First of all, I have always voted in support of aid for Israel, and aid for Israel has always not had conditions on it. Now, this bill, and I’ll come back to this, because this is the first time we’ve seen in a very long time that an emergency bill, and, boy, is this an emergency, comes with a pay-for. And a pay-for is, in this case, a Democratic policy priority. So, people need to step back and think, wait a minute, emergency legislation is now, in the Congress of the United States, going to be subject to, well, yeah, we’ll fund Israel’s effort here, but we also want to achieve this policy win against the opposite party. That is a very dangerous path to go down. The bill did not contain humanitarian aid, which we have just spent the last four minutes talking about in terms of its importance, and, of course, splitting Israel from Ukraine reflects the fact that they are pandering — they, being the Republicans — to the roughly 50% of House Republicans who don’t want to help Ukraine in its fight against Russia. None of those things are good, Wolf, in my opinion, and that’s why I voted against this bill.”

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