The Daily Signal - Sen. Marshall: Why Israel Aid Package Must Stand Alone

Episode Date: November 3, 2023

The Biden administration should act quickly to support an aid package for Israel, thus sending a clear message to Iran as the Jewish state seeks to root out Tehran-backed Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip, Sen. Roger Marshall urges.  “Leave it to President Biden to blow an opportunity to bring a clear, precise, quick, unhesitant message to the people of Iran, the terrorists from Iran, the terrorists from Hamas, all the puppets of Iran,” Marshall told The Daily Signal. Israel would receive at least $14.3 billion in aid under a stand-alone bill introduced last week by Marshall, R-Kan., and fellow Senate Republicans JD Vance of Ohio, Mike Lee of Utah, and Ted Cruz of Texas. Marshall joins the show to discuss the importance of a stand-alone Israel aid package. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, November 3rd. I'm Virginia Allen. Both Democrats and Republicans support aid for Israel, but there are significant differences of opinion in what should be included in an aid package. Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas, along with Senators, Vance, Lee, and Cruz have introduced a stand-alone aid package. Senator Marshall argues that the fastest way to provide support for Israel and to send a clear message to Iran and Hamas that America supports Israel is to pass a standalone aid package. Of course, the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress, they've proposed a $105 billion aid package that, yes, includes aid for Israel, but also over $61 billion in aid for Ukraine

and billions of aid for other issues. Senator Marshall joins the show today to explain why we need an aid package that is a standalone aid package for Israel right now and how Congress can move forward and get it done. Stay tuned for our conversation after this. Conservative women are problematic women. Why? Because we don't adhere to the agenda of the radical left. Every Thursday morning on the Problematic Women podcast, Kristen I, Cammer, Lauren Evans, and me, Virginia Allen, are joined by other conservative women to break down the big issues and news you care about. Whether you're interested in hot takes and conversations on pop

culture or what Congress is up to, problematic women has you covered. We sort through the news to keep you up to date on the issues that are of particular interest to conservative leaning that is problematic women. Find problematic women wherever you like to listen to podcasts and follow the show on Instagram. It is my distinct privilege today to be joined by Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas. Thank you so much for being with us today, Senator Marshall. Virginia, glad to be here. We got some really, really important topics to share with your listeners. We do, we do. Let's dive right in and talk about aid for Israel. What we have seen from the Biden administration is a proposal put forth for a $105 billion aid package that includes $14.3 billion for Israel

and 61.4 billion for Ukraine. You have been very clear that aid for Israel should be standalone, shouldn't be tied to aid for Ukraine or anything else. Why is that? Well, Virginia, leave it to President Biden to blow an opportunity to bring a clear, precise, quick, unhesident message to the people of Iran, the terrorists from Iran, the terrorists from Hamas, all the puppets of Iran,

that really this week, last week, we could have passed maybe with 98 of 100 senators voting to help Israel out right now. But instead, once you bring in these other issues, Ukraine funding, Taiwan funding, his bill actually opens up the border even more. When you bring all those in, it becomes very controversial. We could send a message yesterday to the terrorist in Iran to say, we're going to hold you accountable. We all saw the brutal savage attack that happened there in Israel. Babies decapitated, women raped, bodies burned. We saw all that. We need a quick response.

Iran needs to know that this isn't a battle just between the people of Israel and the Hamas Army of Terror. This is a battle for the future of humankind and that we're not going to tolerate terrorism. So yourself and Senators, Vance, Lee, and Cruz, you all have put forth in the Senate a very straightforward, standalone aid package for Israel. Share a little bit about what is included in that package. Well, essentially, we take the amount of money that President Biden recommended, I think, of $14 billion, and that seems like a reasonable amount, and basically will replenish and give Israel more military aid as well. There's no funding for humanitarian whatever's into Gaza.

We think that that's a mistake that we've seen just recently. The Gaza aid that the Hamas Army of Terror stole that as well. So it's all the funding strictly for Israel to fight that battle. Very straightforward and would love to get it on the floor to vote on today. Yeah. Well, we've seen that from the House, the GOP House, of course now led by Speaker Mike Johnson, they have put forward very similar legislation saying there should be a standalone aid package in that same just over a $14 billion mark there.

But what we've seen from President Biden is he's essentially already said, well, if that reaches my desk, I'm going to veto it. Right. So another veto threat. And by the way, I'm leading the league and veto threats and vetoes by the president. I'm very proud that he's vetoed five of our bills so far. First of all, Speaker Johnson has my 110 total support. He and his wife, Kelly, came in together with us on the House side.

And just for your listeners' sake, he's genuinely a godly man. And that you can just see the fruits of the spirit come from him, that he practices gentleness. He's a great listener, but he is truly a man of faith. And I think for such a time as this, God has called him to be right where he is. Truly a conservative, truly wants to get to a balanced budget. So the difference between his legislation, and we actually introduced a second bill to mimic that one, where there's the pay for. So the difference between maybe what we wanted to do over here is that he wants to take funding away from the IRS, which we agree.

We want to do that as well. it's going to make it harder to pass over here. So I think for the sake of expedition, we would have done it without. But regardless, he has our support, unfortunately over on the Senate side, Senate leadership on both parties want to cram Ukraine funding. And let me just speak just a second about Ukraine. Yeah, please. This is a nine or ten year battle war. Already 200,000 people have died.

No wind in sight. They're in a stalemate. We need to be focused on a peace. solution in Ukraine. And even over the last week, we've seen the countries of Poland, of Hungary, Slovakia say enough that there's so much corruption going on in Ukraine, we can't keep doing this. Debating Ukraine deserves its time, and what we're going to do there is very important as well. But there's just no way that it's of the critical timing that Israel is. And that's why we need to separate this legislation. Okay. So speak a little bit, because

Like you mentioned, Speaker Johnson has recommended that paying for aid to Israel should come out of this kind of big fund from under the Biden administration that they've put money towards funding the IRS, expanding the IRS. So now are you saying that yourself and the other senators backing this bill that you all are also advocating for that? Or where do you recommend that money come from? Right. And I know this is confusing, but I have to go down two roads at the same time. That's what I'm used to doing in my business world. So I think we're going down two roads. I could support either one of those.

I'm just saying from a practical standpoint, it's going to be hard, even harder. We go from 98 votes for this over on the Senate side to I'm not sure, you know, it's going to be, we can get 60 or not. So I'm also a realist. Yeah. Yeah. Where do things stand? Because it does seem like there's a lot of disagreement between Republicans and Democrats in Washington, D.C. over this right now. How do we move the ball forward quickly for Israel?

Well, I think the quickest way to do it is allow us to put our legislation on the floor, ask for unanimous consent. And really, that can be done in one day. That would be the most expeditious way. And we may try to get that done. I'm trying to give Speaker Johnson just a little bit more leeway to see what he does here in the next two days as well. Eventually, we want to put wind beneath his cells and give him a victory. I certainly think whatever comes out of the house is going to be more conservative, more I think consistent with my values than what's going to come out of the White House.

All right. We're going to obviously continue watching this. I want to ask you about Iran because you mentioned that just a moment ago. Where should America's focus be right now as it relates to relations with Iran? This is a sensitive subject. Things are changing rapidly. Where is our focus need to be? Well, I'm sure I don't remind your listeners that Iran is the head of the stake.

They're the largest state funder of 10. state funder of terrorism. And appeasement doesn't work. The Biden-Obama administrations have tried to coddle them. And I'm reminded, I think it was Winston Churchill, said you can't tame a tiger by petting it. And that's what they try to do. They petted this, and now he's rubbing their belly. Think about what under this administration, what he's done for Iran.

From day one, he tried to give them nuclear weapons. And they're still very, very close to having nuclear weapons. Could you imagine the situation right now if Iran had nuclear. weapons and maybe they smuggle one over to the Gaza Strip, what the situation would look like differently. But beyond that, it's the funding that this administration that Joe Biden has turned his head to Iran's economy. He's allowed them to continue to ship oil to China.

When Joe Biden became president, Iran had $6 billion of money left. Today they have $60 billion in account. He's allowing them to sell a billion dollars every day, or excuse me, a billion dollars every week to China. And then from a military standpoint, what we've seen Iran do here in the last several weeks is some 25 attacks on Americans. They continue to have a bounty on the heads of previous people that served under President Trump to this day. So we sat there and we just watch this happening. At some point in time, you have to stand up and hit the bully in the nose.

And that's what my suggestion would be here. And what is hitting the bully in the nose look like? That's a good question, Virginia. You know, I think I certainly, I think we put some guardrails around it. I'm not wanting to start World War III. I'm not a war monger. But the only thing that these folks understand is an eye for an eye or a tooth for tooth. So I think something proportional and maybe exponentially more, when they attack 25 of us of our different military institutions, installations, then we should be attacking five or ten of theirs.

Wherever that attack was launched from, whichever one of their proxies it was, we need to retaliate against those. some point in time, we need to certainly stand up to Iran, maybe even within their own nation's boundaries. We'll see certainly less stop their ships that are shipping oil to China right now. Yeah. Yeah. Well, given the situation and growing tensions, obviously, in the Middle East that are developing so rapidly, yourself and other lawmakers have expressed concerns over America's borders and specifically our southern border. And the threat of could terrorists take advantage of the current border crisis and cross our southern border. How real is that threat? Well, FBI Director Ray was in front of our committee yesterday, and he said it's a very real threat

that Americans don't need to be panicked, but we certainly need to be on an altered, extra high alert mode, that we need to be watching our back, as my dad, the police officer, says, that we need to be, if you see something, say something, those types of things. I think it's very, very real. And let's talk about why. That's a real threat. We also had Secretary Mallorcas in front of us yesterday. He admitted that we have 600,000 godaways that have come into this country in the past year. So we have no idea who those people are, where they're from, where are they terrorists, what are their intentions? And you throw on top of that, we've stopped 170 people on the terrorist watch list in the past year.

On top of that, we had 60,000 aliens of interest in the past two years. Those are people from Turkey, from Iran, from Afghanistan, those types of countries. And on top of that, 20,000 Chinese nationals have entered our country and been released as well. So from that body of people, could you imagine a group of terrorists? Are there sleeper cells out there? So this is a very, I don't want to make anybody panic, but this is a very real threat. I mean, Israel thought Hamas could not strike out, but they did and lost 1,400. Innocent lives, yeah.

Yeah. In relation, you mentioned there's more than 170 folks on the terrorist watch list who have been encountered at America's borders. What do we know about those people? Do we know, you know, were they automatically removed, were they released into America? Do we have data on who those 170 people were? Yeah, well, the answer is no. And that's exactly the question I asked of Secretary Mayorkas yesterday. and he refused to really answer it in any way, shape, or form.

I understand there may be some very sensitive information there, but he could have at least given us the response that, look, they're not running free in America. Some are in jail. Some we sent back to the Middle East where they were from. But there's really just the silence is so deafening. And I think what's important is that he doesn't understand why this is so important back home. people back home don't feel safe and secure anymore.

My own parents, my dad, the chief of police in 25 years, my hometown, the same home I grew up in. And they don't feel safe anymore. Well, why don't they feel safe anymore? We're losing a Kansas every day to fentanyl poisoning. We're losing 300 people nationwide of fentanyl poisoning. The cartel has a large presence in Kansas. Wherever there's drug trafficking going on, there's crime. They go hand in hand.

That's the first thing my dad taught me is that crime follows the duty. drug trafficking. Human trafficking is exploding across the country as well. So there's a reason people don't feel safe in their homes anymore. And then again, 600,000 got aways last year. We don't have operational control over a border. And that's what our Secretary of Homeland Security is missing. He doesn't understand that this is the number one concern for folks back home is their safety and security. I think that's why this is going to be the number one defining issue for the next presidential election, which president can keep us safe and secure again? That's pretty striking to say that the cartels have such a strong presence in Kansas.

I don't think many people would think in the middle of America that there's a stronghold of cartel activity in a state like Kansas that's very far from either the southern or the northern border. That's just very, very eye. Right. And this is, I've had multiple visits with the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, the DEA, local sheriffs and they're following these people. That it is absolutely, they're not even sleeper cells anymore.

These are active cells that are taking the drugs that are trafficked through the, from Mexico. They come to Kansas, and then they go east and west on interstate 70. And then the human trafficking is exploding as well. We're breaking up, we're breaking up rings where maybe 30, 50, 60 people were basically in some type of servitude to the cartel paying back their debt, their so-called. debt for getting safe passage through Mexico. Senator, while I have you here, I do want to take a second and just talk about spending because we're just over two weeks out now from the end of the government being funded on

November 17th. We're funded until then. What is the path forward? Are we going to see a government shutdown? What are these next couple weeks hold? Right. You know, I mentioned earlier that for such a time as this, Mike Johnson has been called to be the Speaker of the House.

So for the first time in years, I have hope that we're going to go through a regular order where we take each spending bill one at a time. Essentially, there are 12 buckets of money to fund the federal government, some 2,000 lines underneath those, but 12 buckets of money, if we would go through those one at a time and expose in daylight what people, these bridges to nowhere, if we expose those on the House floor or Senate floor, I think we'll start seeing some real trimming as well. But there's no way that Mike can get those done between now and November the 17th. I think that's D-Day, is November the 17th. But at least Mike, Mike, has a plan and he started going through those one at a time already. They can continue it. We're asking

on the Senate site to start to go through those one at a time as well, but instead our Schumer, Senator Schumer is bringing them in little minibuses, three or five at a time, which are hard for us to swallow. We're going to have to do some type of continuing resolution to give Mike Johnson and the House Republicans an opportunity to start going through this budget. But what they're suggesting is a continuing resolution with significant cuts as well. That, look, this country is going to spend $900 billion this year on interest. $900 billion. That's what we're spending on the military. We cannot continue down this path. It's painful. This process is going to be painful. No one this week has came to me and said, we appreciate your federal funding for such and such

project. We want to take a cut this year. It's going to be painful, but we have to address the problem. Again, we kind of started this conversation earlier. I've got four grandchildren. If we want to lead this country better than we found that we're going to have to make some tough decisions today. Yeah. Senator, final question before I let you go. A little bit of a lighter note, so it's fall. Many of Americans are enjoying a lot of football right now. And both Kansas State and Kansas college teams are ranked in the top 25. What do you expect to see from these teams the rest of the season? Well, funny you should mention that. I had a great weekend back home. It's duck hunting season, so we got to go out.

It was freezing cold, 29 degrees. Kansas State had a strong victory this week. KU, a big upset over Oklahoma. So it's fun to have the football back. My chiefs took it on the chin a little bit. But Kansas State plays KU at the end of November, and I have degrees from both of them, so it's going to be a tough game, but I bleed purple.

I love it. Well, Senator, thank you for your time today. Really appreciate it. Thanks, Virginia. Thanks so much for joining us today on the day. Daily Signal podcast. Make sure that you check out our evening show. It's right here in the same podcast feed where every weekday we bring you the top news of the day. Also take a moment to subscribe to the Daily Signal podcast wherever you listen. We're across all podcast platforms and

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