U.S. Aid to Israel Still Off Limits In Search for Budget Cuts

By Richard H. Curtiss

"Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT) called on the Clinton administration to provide $1 billion in assistance to the former Soviet states next year—significantly more than the White House is considering. . . Because this year's $14-billion foreign aid budget is almost certain to be cut, Leahy suggested 'ruthlessly slashing U.S. security assistance to other parts of the world and other parts of the foreign aid program' to pay for the package. In his speech, he stopped short of specifically mentioning Israel and Egypt. '' —Staff writer Michael Ross, Los Angeles Times, March 5, 1993

Whether you regard it as gathering resources for four years of Democratic "tax and spend" profligacy, or cleaning up after 12 years of Republican "borrow and spend" folly, the president and Congress are looking for ways to save money. They know, but for domestic political reasons are afraid to mention, that they could cut at least $4 billion from the fiscal 1994 budget (see table on following page) by halting any further aid to Israel until it implements U.N. Security Council Resolution 242's land-for-peace formula. They also know, or should, that after Israel does so it will no longer need such huge quantities of U.S. aid.

There's a further $8 billion that could be saved by withholding, as the Bush administration threatened to do, any more U.S. loan guarantees to Israel until it totally freezes Israeli government subsidies and Israeli government-funded activities in the illegal Jewish settlements in Israeli-occupied territories.

The U.S. taxpayer can't recoup the $2 billion in Israeli borrowing the Bush administration guaranteed in its final weeks in office in January 1993, and the $400 million in Israeli borrowing guaranteed in 1991. But if the Clinton administration and Congress called such a halt right now to handing out any more of the $8 billion in U.S. Loan guarantees Israel has requested for the next four years, the Israeli government would be prevented from going deeper into debt by continuing to spend on Jewish settlements in areas slated under Resolution 242 for return to Palestinian Arab control.

This would reduce the near certainty of an eventual Israeli default on all of the loan guarantees. Under the terms which Israel has negotiated with lending banks, if Israel defaults after 10 years, the U.S. taxpayer will have to pay back not only the outstanding principal but also all of the accumulated interest, since all interest payments are deferred for the first 10 years of the loans. Under such circumstances, each $2 billion in U.S. Loan guarantees eventually will cost the U.S. taxpayer more than $2 billion.

Both Sen. Patrick Leahy and Rep. David Obey (D-WI), chairmen, respectively, of the responsible Senate and House appropriations subcommittees, have, directly or indirectly, called attention to the enormous U.S. foreign aid outlays to Israel taking place in 1993, and scheduled for a repeat in 1994. To date, however, no member of Congress has dared to suggest making significant savings by halting the number Israel is doing on the U.S. Treasury. Nor, apparently, does the Clinton administration want to think about it. Here are the kinds of reductions they'll consider instead:

President Clinton has directed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to submit plans by June 30 to scale back its proposed space station, which was to be launched at the end of the decade at a cost of $31 billion and to remain in orbit for 30 years. Now the president has ordered NASA to produce plans for a curtailed version to be ready for launching in 1997 and designed to last 10 to 15 years. The purpose of the curtailed plan is to reduce expenditures on the space station which, in 1992, were $2.1 billion and in 1993 were budgeted at $2.3 billion'—about one-third of the funds spent on Israel in 1993 and tentatively scheduled to be spent again on Israel in 1994.

Budget Items in Jeopardy

America's other "big science" item in jeopardy in next year's federal budget is the U.S. Energy Department's super-collider. The U.S. already has committed $1.5 billion to the project, which consists of a 54-mile circular tunnel in Texas through which subatomic particles would be hurled at each other at nearly the speed of light. The purpose is to discern once and for all the nature of matter. When the collider is completed, it will become the world's premier center for international particle physics research.

Because the questions it answers will provide underpinning for virtually all of humanity's subsequent research into the nature of matter and the composition and future evolution of the universe, the U.S. government has solicited about $1.7 billion in foreign contributions. However, every time Congress talks about terminating or cutting back the project, potential donor countries postpone their own projected financial contributions. If Congress could appropriate this year the $5.5 billion total needed to finish the collider on schedule at the end of this decade, there is little doubt the promised foreign contributions would follow.

The cost to complete the project, and ensure that the profoundly significant results of the research will become available throughout the remaining lifetimes of every American taxpayer, is less than the cost to the U.S. taxpayer of one year's aid to Israel.

The Department of State, which submits the basic budget figure for aid to Israel to Congress, has decided that, with the end of the Cold War, rather than replace its half-completed new embassy building in Moscow, it should go ahead and finish the existing shell. Construction had been stopped when it was discovered that the former Soviet state's intelligence operatives had installed so many listening devices in the walls and foundations that it would be impossible ever to make any conversation in the new U.S. Embassy building secure from eavesdropping. In the same press conference in which he announced that, by making do instead of starting all over again in Moscow, the U.S. government would save $240 million,³ Secretary of State Warren Christopher said also:

"The administration plans to ask this year for a steady level of aid to both Egypt and Israel. And we have no intention of lowering those amounts in order to provide aid to Russia." (The level of direct bilateral U.S. foreign aid to Egypt's estimated 58 million people is pegged at two-thirds of the level of similar U.S. aid to Israel's 5 million people.)

If the U.S. does not lower the amounts of its $6.321 billion in aid to Israel in 1993⁴ (see box), it will spend $17,317,808 per day, seven days a week, 365 days a year on Israel in 1994. If, on the other hand, the U.S. cut off its aid to Israel for two weeks (13.86 days), it would save the price of building a brand-new totally secure U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

The cost of United Nations peacekeeping missions around the world this year, involving 55,000 blue-helmeted soldiers, logisticians, doctors, nurses and aviators in Cambodia, Lebanon, Syria, Cyprus, Somalia, Western Sahara and points between, is $1.4 billion,⁵ less than a quarter of the amount of U.S. taxpayer dollars that will go to Israel this year.

One of the most serious reproaches to U.S. insistence on deciding which U.N. operations it will contribute to and which not, and thereby strongly influencing which crises the U.N. reacts to at all, is the fact that the U.S. is $240 million in arrears in past dues, and $309 million in arrears in current dues, for a total of $549 million. However, if the U.S. cut off its aid to Israel for a month (31.7 days), it could pay off its entire debt to the U.N.

Costs to the U.S. of maintaining its own forces in Somalia during the first three months of its humanitarian mission there were estimated by the Bush administration at $560 million,⁶ a good reason for getting out as quickly as possible. However, the whole cost could be paid by suspending aid to Israel for just over a month (32.34 days). In fact, aid to Israel costs the U.S. taxpayer daily almost three times what U.S. forces in Somalia cost the U.S. taxpayer daily during the first, expensive 90 days of the mission.

Domestic Programs vs. Aid to Israel

How do some of the domestic programs that so concern Congress compare with costs of aid to Israel? The subsidy to American beekeepers that stung both President Clinton and syndicated columnist George Will into making public cries of pain this February cost the U.S. taxpayer $18.6 million in 1992⁷ and will cost about the same this year. That's just over one day's (1.07 days) cost of U.S. aid to Israel.

Bees, of course, do more than produce honey. They are essential to pollination of a great many food crops, as are some other insects. The federal government is concerned enough about endangered insect species to have spent just under $1.4 million per year on preserving all U.S. endangered insect species from 1989 to 1991.⁸ Since aid to Israel costs the U.S. taxpayer $721,565.33 per hour, all U.S. endangered insect species programs could be funded in 1994 by skipping aid to Israel for just under two (1.94) hours.

Israel must be doing very big things with the American money and equipment it receives. The largest ongoing public works program in the United States today is that of the Southern California Rapid Transit District. It is projected to create 1.4 million jobs while producing and operating 400 miles of commuter rail service in and around Los Angeles over the next 30 years at a cost of $183 billion.⁹ That's $6.1 billion per year, slightly less than the cost of annual U.S. aid to Israel, with most of it to be raised not just from the U.S. federal government, but from city, county and state taxpayers who will benefit from it.

Total annual cost to the United States of firearms injuries, including ambulance, hospital, doctor and rehabilitation costs, is estimated by the federal government at $1 billion. "Total costs to the U.S. of street and domestic violence are $5.3 billion, the U.S. government estimates." Together, the total of $6.3 billion is almost exactly the $6.321 billion annual cost to the U.S. taxpayer of aid to Israel.

The federal government estimates the cost of drug abuse in the U.S. at $10.6 billion per year.¹² Many Americans think these are America's top three contemporary social problems. But, with the cost of Israel somewhere between the cost of drug abuse and the cost of street and domestic violence, and six times the cost of firearms injuries, a case might be made that Israel is America's second costliest social problem, right behind drug abuse.

The solution to drugs, violence and firearms abuse arguably is to spend more on their abatement. What distinguishes America's three named social problems from America's Israel problem, however, is that the latter can be solved by spending less, not more, money.

The only solution to the Israel problem is to curb no-strings U.S. taxpayer aid in order to pressure Israel's leaders into solving their problem, and America's, by making a land-for-peace agreement with their Arab neighbors.