Democratic and Republican senators disagreed sharply about the recently concluded $38 billion U.S. military aid package for Israel as they spoke at a lunchtime gathering of Orthodox Jews who came to Washington last week to lobby Congress for more funds for security for the Jewish religious and education institutions.
Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) criticized the deal because, he said, it is conditioned on Israeli spending all the aid money in the United States, rather than in Israel.
“Now the Israelis spend about 75 percent of the money we give them on United States industries,” Cotton said, referring to an aid agreement that will expire in 2018. “That’s a good thing for us, obviously, because it provides American jobs. [But] by forcing them to spend all that money in the United States, we may forestall critical technological developments that are not just good for Israel and their industries, but for us.”