March 9, 2013
Another right move, albeit a “no brainer” by Congress
From The Hill:
Secretary of State John Kerry had hoped to offer considerably more aid to Egypt than the $250 million he announced during his trip to Cairo but was blocked by Congress, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) said.
“This is not the aid package that the administration wanted to announce,” Royce told The Hill. The administration wanted to release a “larger sum,” but bowed to the wishes of Royce’s committee as well as congressional appropriators, he said.
Royce wouldn’t say how much Kerry had hoped to announce, but the State Department has been pressing Congress to greenlight $450 million in direct aid since last fall.“Our approach is not the full-throttle administration approach of delivering all the aid that they wanted to deliver, but rather a measured approach of tying tranches to results as it pertains to the peace treaty with Israel, to cooperation with respect to smuggling [into Gaza] and with respect to economic reforms to guarantee civil rights and the rule of law within Egypt,” he said. “That’s the pressure that we’re applying.”
Of course the Obama Administration wanted to give the farm to the anti-Israel, anti-U.S. (as we’ll have confirmed for us once the new Islamofascist-run Egyptian government has all they can get from us and then shows its true colors, just like the rest of Obama’s “Arab Spring” friends) Muslim Brotherhood. Luckily, some right thinkers in Congress are doing their job and preventing the “enemy of the state” at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue from going whole hog.
The forme chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), and the chairwoman of the appropriations subpanel on foreign aid, Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), placed a hold on the money out of concern over the Muslim Brotherhood government’s democratic credentials and pro-U.S. stance. A Granger staffer said the chairwoman has been in continuous contact with the State Department over the funds and acquiesced to lifting her hold on the $190 million slice that Kerry announced.
…democratic credentials and pro-U.S. stance!???
Yeah, sure, of course…