Well it’s hardly the first time that DC is at a stalemate. But it is one of the most serious.
At stake is my old complaint. Why we can’t we have a party — Republican or Democrat — that can both protect the borders of the United States and those of our allies?
Some Republicans and Democrats seem to have thought it was a good idea to tie these two funding issues into one bill.
Republicans thought they’d finally force the Biden administration into stopping millions of illegal migrants continuing to stream across the southern border.
Democrats hoped that by giving Republicans this concession they would be able to get through their military funding package to Ukraine and Israel.
But at the time of writing it seems that we are once again forced to consider the possibility that the US Senate and Congress now want America to be incapable of walking and chewing gum at the same time.
The proposed bill would pass around $60 billion of aid to Ukraine, $14 billion to Israel and $20 million for the southern border. But people on both sides of the aisle are unhappy about it.
Donald Trump has called the bill “horrendous.” “This Bill is a great gift to the Democrats, and a Death Wish for The Republican Party. . . . Don’t be STUPID!!!” he said this week. “We need a separate Border and Immigration Bill. It should not be tied to foreign aid in any way, shape, or form!”
Senator Marco Rubio has said that the bill “wouldn’t solve the mass migration crisis we’re facing — it would do the opposite.” While Senator Ted Cruz has gone one further, calling the bill “a steaming pile of crap.”
On the other side, Democrats have had their own gripes.
Yesterday Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote, “Prime Minister Netanyahu and his right-wing government have failed to get the hostages released and have killed nearly 30,000 Palestinians. No more blank checks for Netanyahu.”
Which is an especially weird way to respond to the bill as well as recent events.
It is not the fault of the Israelis that the hostages haven’t been released. It is the fault of Hamas and Islamic Jihad for stealing Israeli citizens in the first place and then refusing to hand them over.
The same terrorist groups who, incidentally, make up the majority of the Palestinian casualties that Senator Warren says she is so concerned about.
In any case — we have a standoff.
On Wednesday the Senate killed the package, voting 49-50 for a bill that needed 60 votes to go forward.
Even Mitch McConnell voted against the bill when it became clear it wasn’t going to pass.
Then yesterday the Senate voted to consider a $95 billion bill for aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
But Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has already suggested that the first bill had no chance of passing the House. “This bill is even worse than we expected,” Johnson wrote on X, concluding, “If this bill reaches the House, it will be dead on arrival.”
But while these political games and stalemates are going on in DC, the rest of the world is looking on in horror.
The Ukrainians are about to enter their third year of war, begun by Vladimir Putin’s brutal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Not a single American has to fight there. All that the Ukrainians are asking for is to continue to be supported and armed in their fight.
A fight which has already cost them a generation of young men — with the average fighting age of Ukrainian soldiers now entering their forties.
The knock-on effects of this are being felt all over Europe, where the continent is waiting to see the consequences if Russia’s invasion is successful.
Last week top military officials in the UK warned that if NATO gets pulled into a full-on war provoked by Russian expansion then UK citizens may have to be conscripted.
Personally I’d be much in favor of dose of conscription in my country of birth. It might knock the country out of its current stupidity and remind people that the post-Communist peace that we all enjoyed does not exist as any law of nature.
Our allies in Israel know this. One of the things that has struck me in Israel and Ukraine during their recent wars is how an invasion by a foreign power or terrorist statelet focuses the mind.
This time last year Israelis were in stand-offs against each other in the streets over proposed judicial reforms.
It took a brutal brigade-sized terrorist invasion of their country to bring them to their senses and remember what is really at stake.
Wouldn’t it be good if a dose of that reality could erupt in DC without this country ever having to undergo any similar horror?
But it is stunning watching the debate how far removed the legislature remains from the problems at home and abroad.
It is not as though the Ukrainians want to fight. Any more than the Israelis do. In my view they deserve our support as they fight to protect their homes and their borders.
But it increasingly seems as though people who recognize that cannot also recognize that we face a catastrophe here at home.
Pro-immigration Democrats and Republicans used to claim that America’s migration crisis was different from Europe’s and that the people coming into this country were at least Hispanic and therefore closer culturally than the Africans and Middle-Easterners who poured into Europe in recent years.
Well look at the pictures from the southern border and you will see that the people coming into this country are a veritable United Nations. Noticeably dominated by sub-Saharan Africans.
If Democrats think that these people are going to come in en masse and integrate happily into American life in their millions then they should look at the integration catastrophes that are roiling Europe today and think again.
But again we come back to the main point. Why can’t Ukraine, Israel and the USA have borders? It seems obvious. Just not in DC.