The whole Trump-Ukraine "outrage" is absurd. All the foreign aid we give comes with strings attached, and all presidents use those strings to help their political standing in America. Is this bad? It's probably not ideal, but what can we do about it? The only real solution I can think of is to just cancel all foreign aid to everyone.
On the campaign trail right now, both Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are promising to suspend foreign aid to Israel if the Jewish nation doesn't change their policies toward Gaza.Sanders, in a speech said, "I would use the leverage, $3.8 billion is a lot of money, and we cannot give it carte blanche to the Israeli government or for that matter to any government at all."
You can disagree with Bernie Sanders' approach to the specific policy on trying to force Israel to soften up on Gaza - many, many do. But the idea that an American President can use foreign aid to spur policy changes or specific actions in the receiving nation is not new or illegal.
Do Warren and Sanders have a political calculation here? Obviously. But I imagine that they also think their "strings" would be good for America's interests. I assume Trump feels similarly with regards to Ukraine and the Bidens.
United States taxpayers provided almost $50 billion in economic and military foreign aid in 2018 alone. That's enough to give every retired worker in America about a $1,200 per year increase in their social security.How can we not expect that our foreign aid will come with expectations, even demands, for some things to get done? ...
So if we are going to criminalize a President attaching strings to foreign aid, just cancel all foreign aid tomorrow and give America's social security recipients a nice monthly increase - they deserve it more than those third-world dictators anyway.
We send a lot of money to foreign countries, and the feigned belief that it's an impeachable offense to expect something in return is completely absurd. Hopefully the President's political intersts align with America's interests, but there's no objective method for ensuring that. If we aren't satisfied with how politics affects foreign aid, then let's just cancel it all -- at least until we get a balanced budget and aren't borrowing money to give away.
