Congressman Brad Schneider on Israel’s relations with the Democratic Party, and about the fiscal logic of a $3.5 trillion social spending package
“Well, I think we’ve got to focus on the outcome. I was obviously very angry about what a small fringe tried to do two weeks ago in blocking the vote on Iron Dome. We worked to make sure that we got a very quickly got to the floor a standalone bill in support of replenishing the interceptors. And it passed 420 to 9. You had across the board support of virtually every Democrat and every Republican.
“On Tuesday, when it passed, it would have passed without a single Republican vote, just because of the politics here. So I’d always prefer a bipartisan vote when we talking about US-Israel relations. And that’s all we got on Thursday. That doesn’t excuse the fact that there are folks who are antagonistic to Israel and the US-Israel relationship, and we need to be aware of it and take all the steps necessary to make sure that we are preserving the very special, ironclad relationship between our two countries.”
“Not at all. If you look at the broad agenda, it doesn’t mean it’s always going to be easy. But I think even with a $3.5 trillion package or $1.5 trillion, whichever way it goes, it is. I’m a member of the New Dem Coalition, as an example, and it is the more centrist policies in this discussion that are leading the way.
“But with respect to Israel, again, you have 420 members vote for funding Iron Dome. The best thing we can do for Israel is to make sure we keep support of the Israel-US relationship bipartisan. That we can get 400 votes of support, whether it’s a Republican Congress, Democratic Congress, a narrow majority or a wide majority on either side, that the support for the US-Israel relationship runs across the full swath of the United States, the House of Representatives and the US Senate.
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