Israel and Its Lobbyists Decline to "Share the Pain" of Budget Cuts

By Kurt Holden

Both Republican and Democratic members of Congress are insisting that "everyone has to share the pain" of major budget cuts starting this year and continuing until the budget is balanced. It's already clear, however, that "everyone" really means "everyone but the Israelis."

Under plans advanced by members of both parties, foreign aid will be cut by a billion dollars a year for three consecutive years, but not a cent will be deducted from Israel's share, which already is more than a third of America's worldwide foreign aid total. Nor, it seems, will anything be deducted from aid to Egypt, which is paid by the U.S. taxpayer primarily to keep the peace with Israel.

When Egypt's annual $2.2 billion in direct bilateral foreign aid, Jordan's approximately $350 million, and $100 million for Palestine are added to Israel's official total of $3.2 billion (which is far from complete, as demonstrated by the box on this page), the combined amount rises to more than half of the U.S. world-wide bilateral foreign aid total. Since that world-wide total is about to be reduced drastically, the amount reserved for Israel and friends will leave very little for anyone else.

Many American Jews are rightfully worried about the long-term effects this conspicuous unwillingness to "share the pain" will have on American perceptions of Israel's U.S. lobbyists, and the community from which they come. They remember how New York hotelier Leona Helmsley's scornful comment that "taxes are for the little people" transformed her into the most hated woman in America—and got her a berth in the slammer for income tax evasion.

However, American perceptions of their Jewish fellow citizens obviously are not on the minds of Israel's leaders, or their AIPAC hirelings, who have made the conscious decision not to give up a cent—and to make any members of Congress who suggest otherwise pay dearly at election time. So far it's working, with even the normally irascible Jesse Helms piously explaining that aid to Israel must not be touched because it's a "friendly" country.

Meanwhile economic and military aid has been suspended for Pakistan, which served as the operations base for the successful U.S.-Saudi campaign to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Economic aid also has been suspended for Oman, which makes its real estate available to the U.S. Defense Department on a daily basis and which served as a major air and naval support base for Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Are these, and the seven African countries where USAID missions are being closed down this year, "unfriendly" countries? (All of sub-Saharan Africa got $1.2 billion in U.S. foreign aid in 1992, and since then the total for Africa has gone down while the total for Israel has gone up.)

The difference between Israel and the rest of the dwindling number of countries that receive any U.S. aid at all is that the other countries don't invest a sizable percentage of their aid money in what now is probably the biggest and certainly the most feared lobby inside the beltway. That lobby's sole job is to keep extracting more funding from U.S. taxpayers—even when they and their government are trying to cope with dwindling resources.

To save $24 billion over the next seven years, U.S. government employees are being asked to share the burden in a number of ways. Although lower-level federal employees are scheduled for a 2.4 percent cost-of-living increase next year, top officials in the executive branch and the senior executive service will have their salaries frozen for the next seven years.

Government workers also will be expected to pay an increased share of their health insurance premiums to save $11 billion over seven years. Future government retirees will have their annuities calculated on the basis of their highest five years of salary instead of their highest three years of salary as is the present practice. This will save $1.6 billion over seven years. Federal workers will be asked to contribute a higher percentage of their salaries to the federal retirement system, saving another $3.7 billion over the same period. Even members of Congress and their staffs will take a pension cut to save $10 million over the seven years.

Federal employee groups can be expected to complain vociferously over their share of the pain. But none would dare point out that during the same seven years in which their sacrifices will save Uncle Sam $40.3 billion, Uncle Sam will be paying Israel $44.247 billion to subsidize its inefficient economy, which remains perhaps the world's very last redoubt of old-fashioned, behind-the-iron-curtain socialism, providing its beneficiaries an easy life and reasonable standard of living while they produce little in return.

The difference is that the old Soviet Union accomplished this by plundering its own and its neighbors' economies and ignoring the resulting resource depletion and environmental degradation. The Israelis accomplish this not by plundering their own economy, resources and environment, but America's instead—and making sure that U.S. politicians who object don't get re-elected.

Obviously sacrifices on the scale contemplated for Americans are going to have to reach into every segment of American life. Cuts in highways, education, social programs, environmental efforts and many kinds of discretionary spending will have to produce savings of $190 billion over seven years. Those are the cuts that are going to hurt most at the local level. Imagine the relief if Congress suddenly said, "We're going to waive nearly a quarter of those cuts." It could be done if Congress just halted the $44.247 billion it will allocate in that seven-year period to Israel, a country with a per capita income of $10,600 in 1992, and an estimated per capita income of $14,000 in 1995. Those figures are comparable with many Western European countries, none of which receive U.S. economic aid.

Of course some of the contemplated cuts are on target. Who except tobacco farmers would regret the loss of the huge subsidy to U.S. tobacco growers, which amounts to $42 million annually? Huge, that is, until it's compared to aid to Israel, which amounts to $17,317,808 a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. That wasteful annual subsidy to all of America's tobacco farmers amounts to less than 2-1/2 days of aid to Israel. Could Congress maybe cut out both?

And then there's the U.S. Geological Survey, whose basic research helps find oil, natural gas, underground water and an array of commercial minerals. It also compiles the basic geological, hydrological and cartographic data that help provide early warnings of earthquakes, landslides, floods and volcanic eruptions, not to mention deterioration of water quality in the nation's lakes and rivers. The Geological Survey may be abolished to save $586 million a year—a bit less than the amount the U.S. gives to Israel every 34 days. Which do you think the American public would abolish if it were given the choice?

There's also the National Biological Service, beloved by environmentalists for helping to identify irreplaceable endangered species and habitats, and reviled by some entrepreneurs as an intrusive government agency seeking to infringe on private property rights. People from both sides of the ideological chasm can agree, however, that someone has to assemble the information upon which wise policies must be based. Therefore, shouldn't the public be given the choice of saving $166 million by abolishing the NBS or the same amount by skipping nine and a half days of aid to Israel?

No mainstream newspaper is going to pose those choices, however. Instead, Israel's hired stategists and spinmeisters are feeding journalists and columnists irrelevant and diversionary reports such as the one snapped up by Barbara Crossette in the Feb. 27 New York Times and Jessica Mathews in the Feb. 28 Washington Post about a January survey of 801 people by a University of Maryland public opinion center that indicated Americans thought that 15 percent of the national budget was spent on foreign aid; and a Harris Poll in November 1993 that showed Americans thought their government devoted 20 percent or more of its spending to foreign aid. The point of the stories was that in fact U.S. spending on foreign aid is about $13 billion, or 1 percent of the federal budget.

Perhaps an even bigger story might have been that of total American spending on foreign aid in a world of 5.5 billion people, more than a third goes to Israel, with a resident population of 5 million, or less than one thousandth of the world's total. It takes one heck of a lobby to accomplish such a distortion of U.S. international priorities.

Kurt Holden, a retired filmmaker, divides his time between the U.S. and the Middle East.