As part of the Republican Party’s broad attack on President Barack Obama’s foreign policy “failures,” and particularly his “soft” stance on the Ukrainian-Russian crisis, Republican lawmakers have strongly criticized the President’s decision to cut “hundreds of millions of dollars” from the Israeli-US missile defense program under the White House’s fiscal year 2015 budget, which reached Congress this week.
According to reports on US right-wing websites, the US government has proposed cutting funding for the development, production and distribution of the Arrow II, Arrow III, Iron Dome, and David’s Sling missile defense systems from the Defense Department budget. An article on the Washington Free Beacon website stated that Obama allocated $96.8 million for all these programs, “a reduction of nearly $200 million from the previous year’s finalized levels.”
The Republicans have already announced that the proposed budget, which totals $3.9 billion, is “as good as dead,” a standard response in an era of vast rifts between Democrats and Republicans.
The Pentagon’s budget chapter calls for drastic contraction of the armed forces, to the level at which it operated almost 75 years ago, in 1940, before the expansion of military forces in anticipation of entering World War II.
Rep. Doug Lamborn, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, claims that the government is preventing sufficient budget for the missile-defense programs, which benefit both the US and Israel: “Once again, the administration is proposing hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to our cooperative missile defense work with Israel. This is very disappointing and it is irresponsible to cut funding to a steadfast ally in an extremely volatile region of the world.”
However, a “Globes” investigation found that the Republican claims are inaccurate, because they compare figures that are not at all parallel. For years, the White House has allocated a particular amount to missile defense in the annual budget, and, each year, Congress has raised the amount, in a process known as plus-up. This is what was done in previous governments, Democratic and Republican alike. A source involved in the process told “Globes” that this is part of the game. Israel is prepared for this, and its lobbyists transmit the appropriate messages to lawmakers.
In fact, Obama’s proposed 2015 budget raises the missile defense budget from $95 million in 2014 to $96.8 million.
Last year, Congress raised the budget for the programs from $95 million to $287.3 million. This year, Congress is expected to raise the budget to a similar amount, as it has done in previous years. Therefore, it cannot be said that the White House has cut “nearly $200 million” of funding to the program. The government’s 2015 fiscal year budget proposal may be compared to the government’s 2014 fiscal year budget proposal, not to retroactive congressional budget adjustments.
A source in Lamborn’s office admitted that “In a narrow, technical sense, it is true that the White House has raised its budget allocation for Israel’s missile programs.” But, he said, the Obama administration is “playing games.” Rather than budget the appropriate amount for an ally such as Israel, the government prefers to budget a lower amount and to rely upon lawmakers to take care of increasing the budget. According to the source, such policies allow the government to allocate funds to unnecessary and wasteful programs.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 6, 2014
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