The Daily Signal - Sen. Roger Marshall on Why Democrats Blocked Israel Aid Package

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

Every Senate Democrat voted in opposition to a stand-alone Israel aid package.  The package, which passed in the House Nov. 2, would have provided Israel with $14.3 billion and was set to pull funding from President Joe Biden’s IRS budget to do so.  On Tuesday, Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., used a special motion to call for a vote on the Israel package on the Senate floor, taking his Democrat colleagues by surprise. The motion failed in a vote of 51 - 48.  “I've been trying to figure out this for weeks as well, maybe months,” Marshall said. “Why are Democrats so afraid of supporting Israel?” Democrats have “lots of reasons why we should fund Ukraine, but they never will say why we should fund Israel,” according to Marshall.  “They say they want to support Israel, but their actions are different,” he says. “What I've found out is there's a significant portion of their base that does not want anyone in their party to support Israel.” Democrats have advocated for an aid bill that includes funding for Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan, and the border, but now that Democrats have blocked the stand-alone Israel aid package, Marshall says there is no path forward for the $14.3 billion bill.  Instead of a swift show of support for Israel from Congress, Marshall says it will likely take months for Congress to work through disagreements and pass a an aid package to support Israel.  Marshall joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain why he is so passionate about standing with Israel, and why lawmakers should support a stand-alone aid package for our closest friend in the Middle East.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I think we're infinitely apart right now within our own Republican Party, within the Democrat Party, what the House wants to do versus what the Senate wants to do is just a huge, huge canyon apart right now. So nothing is going to happen. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, November 16th. I'm Virginia Allen. And that was Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas. On Tuesday, Senator Marshall called for a vote on the floor of the Senate to stand alongside the people of Israel and to pass a $14.3 billion dollar standalone aid package for Israel.

Every Senate Democrat voted against that standalone aid package for Israel. Today, Marshall is joining me on the show to explain why he believes Democrats refuse to support the package and why he is working so hard to provide Israel with the support they need. Stay tuned for our conversation. But first, I want to tell you all about another podcast from the signal. Conservative women are problematic women. Why? Because we don't adhere to the agenda of the radical left. Every Thursday morning on problematic women, Kristen I-camera Lauren Evans and me, Virginia Allen, are joined by other conservative women to break down the big issues and the news that 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. And on this, week's show. I'm talking specifically about Israel and a film that I saw that has raw footage of Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7th. I go and did some detail about what is included in that film and why a ceasefire is not an option for Israel. So make sure that you check out Problematic Women this week and every Thursday morning. You can find Problematic Women wherever you like to listen the podcasts. We're across all podcasts, platforms, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play. All right. Now let's get to my conversation with Senator Marshall. Senator Marshall, thank you so much for being back with us today. You joined us here on the

show on November 2nd to talk about the standalone Israel Aid package that you had introduced, and we have some significant follow-ups to that conversation to have today. So thank you for being here. Yeah, you're welcome. It's hard to believe I forgot. I knew we had the conversation. I didn't realize we'd already launched that. So yeah, there's been a lot happened since then. So much has happened on Tuesday. You surprised your Democrat colleagues in the Senate, and you brought to, you introduced to the floor of the Senate a motion to vote on the standalone Israel aid package. That's the aid package that the House had already passed two weeks ago. And you saw an opportunity. you went ahead, you called for there to be a vote on that standalone 14.3 billion aid package for Israel.

Explain what happened. Yeah. Well, certainly I'm not a parliamentarian. I'm a physician, so I'm learning as we go. But to my surprise, when I came to the United States Senate, just because I want to vote on something doesn't mean I get a vote. And that's why it's so important who controls the majority up here. The Senate Majority Leader gets to decide who gets a vote. and who doesn't? You know, as you're mentioned on your show before, we talked, you know,

was that five weeks ago, we've been calling for a vote on the standalone Israel bill. We made two other attempts through classical parliamentarian procedures to get what's called unanimous consent, and that was shot down by them. So there was this special motion. They tell me it's never been done before, but my staff alerted me to this procedure. We went on the floor. We had the 11 seconds, so we scrambled to find 11 senators who would support this, and we eventually got our standalone vote. So really what this was all about is the Democrats did not want to take a vote on Israel funding unless they were getting Ukraine funding forward and made our border more porous as well.

So we got our vote, and just to let all your listeners know, we lost it. That's what I was shocked. Every Democrat voted for this, voted against the funding for the standalone Israel bill. They were just on the mall, moments, before this, shouting their commitment to Israel, but then they show up 10 minutes later and vote against funding for Israel. As you mentioned, we had the March for Israel on the National Mall on Tuesday. And like you said, there were Democrats and Republican lawmakers who were there who spoke about

the need to support Israel, including Senate Majority Leader. And what happened, though, as you mentioned, what happened on the floor of the Senate is that Democrats, every Democrat, did vote to block that vote to pass that standalone aid package for Israel. Why do you think that they, all Democrats, voted against it? I'll remind our listeners that the funding for this proposed by House Speaker Mike Johnson, he proposed that the funding would come out of Biden's funding for the IRS. Do you think that's the reason why Democrats stood in opposition to it, or is there more going on here? Oh, I think there's a lot more going on. Maybe that's their easy excuse to talk about this. And by the way, this is the exact

amount of funding that Joe Biden had asked for. So we gave Biden what he wanted and still he threatens to veto it. But this is another thing that surprised me up here. I've been trying to figure out this for weeks as well, maybe months. Why are Democrats so afraid of supporting Israel? If you listen to the debates on the floor that we've had with them, three-fourths of their time, they're talking about Ukraine and maybe 10% other time they're talking about Israel. So they got lots of reasons why we should fund Ukraine, but they never will say why we should fund Israel. So they say they want to support Israel, but their actions are different. And what I found out is there's a significant portion of their base that does not want anyone in their party to support Israel. So they're split on

this. They are absolutely split on it. Their base, part of their base, they're a very loud part of their basis against supporting Israel. I had no idea the amount of anti-Semitism out there, but most of this is being driven by the far left. One of my colleagues referred to Democrats' decision to table the aid package for Israel, the standalone aid package, as prioritizing audits before allies. Do you think that's a fair assessment given that this money proposed for Israel was going to come out of the IRS funding? Well, certainly I think this is all about priorities. And all long, my priority is meant to secure the border and get American hostages home

and support Israel. And really, I put the securing the border even ahead of all that. You know, we're losing 300 people, 300 Americans every day to fentanyl poisoning, just to put it in proportion. So to me, their priority is indeed IRS over funding for Israel. And really, I just want to stop here and make this point. This is way more than just supporting Israel to me. That really, this is a war between the people of Israel

and the Samas army of terror, but this is a war for mankind as well. Are we going to sit there and watch these brutal type of savage attacks by terrorists who have sworn to kill every person from Israel and every American? That is their goal. These are not normal people. We had several folks here in our office last week. We met a bunch more families yesterday that have family members that have been kidnapped or killed. And to a person, what they wanted to communicate

is Americans underestimate the savages that these terrorists are what Hamas is. I think it's so hard for Americans to grasp that what happened in Israel is below something animals would do. One story, a person, his name was Duran shared with me. If I can, if I can, I could just share his story if you don't mind. So Dren's brother was the mayor of a little caboots, which is a little settlement right beside, I mean literally a stone's throw from Gaza. So his brother was the mayor on the morning of October 7th,

Hamas broke through the fence, they killed the military, then they killed his brother, and then next they killed his, it would have been his brother's mother-in-law, and then his son and a nephew. brutally, savagely attacked, grenades, different types of torture as well. These folks are savages. And we're not dealing with Luxembourg here. That's what Americans need to understand, and the people on the far left,

you would think that a civilized country where you could sit down and have this discussion about letting hostages free, come out from underneath the hospitals. We'd love to help the people in the hospital, the patients. I'm a physician. But if you want to help these patients out, you have to take your weapons and turn them in and turn yourselves in. So it's just a whole different breed of cats here we're dealing with. What are we hearing from leaders in Israel as it relates to what they need from America?

Yeah. You know, I think certainly there's the weapons part of this, but I think more importantly is the moral support. That as, look, I remind you what President Eisenhower said, he said that I hate war as only a person who's... lived at Cann as one who's seen as brutality and its futility. War is never looked good. I mean, after Pearl Harbor, we killed over 100,000 civilians in Japan. After 9-11, over a million casualties and people died as well in that war against terror. It's never pretty. I think what they need is just

the moral support and this message to Iran. That's why it was so important. me for get this vote. I really thought we would get 98 out of 100 votes to support funding for Israel. I really did. I thought when push came to shove, and that's the message that Iran and all their puppets need to hear from us as well. Otherwise, they're seeing green light. Right now, we're seeing all these puppets from Iran attacking military installations. I think we're up to almost 60 installations now, and we've retaliated by bombing four little garages full of ammunition. We should be attacking 10 of them for one of us. Right now, Iran, Hamas, all the terrorist organizations see no red line out of this White House, and that's a scary proposition right now, because Americans

are next. Make no mistake about it, Americans are next. I have no idea how many terrorists have crossed our border and are situated in silent cells right now across America. I know so many of our listeners have great concerns about our southern border and security on the border. Why is the situation in Israel so closely tied to what's happening on the border? Why should we, as individuals who care about border security, also be concerned about what is happening in Israel? Right. Well, I think that's both the terrorist organizations is what we're concerned about. And what happened in Israel is a powder keg way to go off in America.

So if you would think about 80,000 aliens of interest from the Middle East that have crossed our border and let go. So we have no idea who those 80,000 people were. Were they terrorists? Were they on a watch list? Are they criminals? Who are they working for? What are they doing now?

Are they set up next to an Air Force base? or they set up next to some type of some electrical generation for your community. So really, we just have no idea where they are. We've lost operational control over border. I think that's very evident. 1.6 million gotaways under Joe Biden. That's the ones we saw. Those are known godaways.

1.6 million people. How many of those people were terrorists? But we know we're seeing record numbers of people from the Middle East that have crossed our border illegally right now. And I think that Americans, they're, they're, they're, they're, gut feelings are usually pretty good. There's a reason they're scared. They should be. I'm scared. My parents are scared. My family is scared and concerned. We all should be, have our head on a swivel right now watching our back. Senator, what happens next? Now that Democrats in the Senate have voted to table the funding, the standalone aid package for Israel, what's the path forward?

Well, that's just it. There's nothing. Nothing is going to happen. That's why we wanted to to address Israel by itself. But otherwise, what Joe Biden has put forward, it's called a supplemental package. It has $60 billion for Ukraine. It has a process on the border that's going to make our border more open. It's going to make asylum more efficient to come through as well. We're not close to getting any of those done.

So I think that we're literally months away from solving those problems, if they ever do. I think we're infinitely apart right now within our own Republican Party. within the Democrat Party, what the House wants to do versus what the Senate wants to do are, is just a huge, huge canyon apart right now. So nothing is going to happen. That's discouraging to hear you say that, Senator.

Wow, what a critical moment in American history and to watch what's happening in Congress. I want to follow up and ask you a little bit about your comments that you made regarding the hospital and the fact that you know, you're a doctor, And of course, we don't want to see any civilians harmed. And it's been tragic to watch what is happening to civilians in this conflict. We learned that this week, Israeli troops did enter Al-Shifra Hospital in Gaza, that they have made a lot of progress advancing.

They're trying to discover where Hamas has hold out, specifically underneath hospitals, underneath areas where there are dense areas. of civilian populations. Do we know how close Israel is to reaching the ultimate goal? Benjamin Netanyahu says their ultimate goal is to destroy Hamas, to dismantle Hamas. What kind of timeline are we looking at here? We had a lot of guesses at the beginning of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. A lot of those estimates have been very wrong for how long that conflict would continue. do we have any sense about how long this conflict could continue?

Well, Virginia, I don't mean to be evasi, but I asked that same question, even behind closed doors, and no one really seems to have a good answer. I want to remind, though, your listeners, that for anyone who wants to be able to get supplies into the hospital or get humanitarian aid into those people, all that has to happen is for Hamas to surrender, lay down their weapons, and to leave. and our friends in Israel will get all the supplies necessary. They'll bring in doctors, nurses, blood supply, oxygen, everything. You know, really, Hamas broke the ceasefire.

There was a ceasefire until October the 7th, okay? On the other hand, it does look like Israel's made more progress more quickly than I thought they would, but now I think they're there in the eye of the storm. And I just don't know how aggressive that they want to be. certainly they've got all the supply lines contained. So I just hate to even give you a guess, whether it's weeks or months, I can't tell you. But certainly I do think that Hamas is going to really struggle with supplies as well.

Those are still being smuggled into them, but I do think that we're, gosh, I feel like we're weeks or months, which is different than Ukraine, by the way. In Ukraine, I think that's what people ask me. There's similarities, but a big difference between what's going on in Israel versus Ukraine is that Ukraine has already been going on for several years. 200,000 people have died. They're in a stalemate.

Some of the surrounding countries like Poland have said no more. We're tired of helping you. You're too corrupt as well. So I think that that war, I think, is five or ten years. I think that this is weeks or months going on here in Israel. Well, Senator, we really appreciate your time today. We appreciate your effort to stand with Israel. and just appreciate your insight today and your time with us.

Well, thanks for giving me a chance as well. And, you know, I think for me, I just would share with folks that this is a spiritual connection that I have with the people of Israel, personal connection as well. Since I was a young, young boy, my mom and my Sunday school teachers taught me to support Israel. And, you know, for such a time as this, we've been called. And I feel like that's what I'm supposed to be doing. So thank you. And with that, that's going to do it for today's.

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