by AWR Hawkins 13 Apr 2012 Against GOP objections, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced that the Obama administration is sending $147 million in funding to the West Bank and Hamas-run Gaza.
Despite a “hold by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
, R-Fla.,” the administration is arguing the money needs to be sent on humanitarian grounds. They did not, however, explain how they plan to force Hamas to use the money for humanitarian purposes.
And while “administrations generally do not disburse funding over the objections of lawmakers on relevant committees,” those associated with Obama have proven more than willing to sidestep Congress to place American tax-dollars in the hands of their friends throughout the world. It was, after all, just last month that the administration
circumvented Congress and gave $1.5 billion in aid to the Muslim Brotherhood-run Egyptian government.
The bottom line is that President Obama, who claims he will act if Congress refuses to act domestically, has now begun applying that same philosophy to international affairs. And the problem with this is that the Founding Fathers placed many of our nation’s purse strings in the hands of Congress in order to place a check on executive power. Thus the solution for an impasse between the legislators and the executive branch is to either seek compromise or for one governmental branch to convince the other of the validity of their argument.
But the solution isn’t for the president to bypass Congress and send money to whomever he wishes, whenever he wishes, with impunity.
On another note, I wonder if Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu feels a bit taken aback by all this? After all, the Obama administration got Israel to promise
not to bomb Iran until after our presidential elections, right before they announced this aid to Hamas.
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