The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government by Mike Lofgren (Audiobook)
From chapter 11:
America First?
Congress’s present slug-like lassitude is not always in evidence; as we have seen with the bank bailout, the institution can act expeditiously, even precipitately, at the behest of Deep State interests. When the stars align, Congress can even act decisively on its own initiative: within days after yet another resumption of the decades-long Israel-Palestine conflict during the summer of 2014, the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee doubled U.S. funds for the Israeli Iron Dome missile defense system. There are disputes about the system’s combat effectiveness, 10 but there is no dispute over Congress’s speed in stepping into an intractable foreign conflict with even more money than the executive branch has thus far lavished upon it.
The chairman of the subcommittee, Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, won some notoriety as a moderately candid truth teller in 2009 when he said of the Senate that the banks “frankly own the place.” Apparently, the senator was not averse to fostering a similar relationship with the American lobbying affiliates of the Likud Party. Among some factions of the Deep State (being chairman of a defense subcommittee confers ex officio membership), the intensity of that relationship is considered a touchstone of good old American patriotism.
As the bill containing the Iron Dome provision proceeded to debate in the full Senate, other business intervened. A bill to address the Central American migration crisis, which had churned domestic politics during the summer of 2014, failed. So did a bill to extend a large number of popular tax provisions: it garnered 96 out of 100 Senate votes on a motion to proceed, but nevertheless fell to a Republican filibuster when majority leader Harry Reid refused to allow a vote on an amendment to repeal the medical device tax provision contained in the Affordable Care Act. The Iron Dome measure, however, miraculously survived when the otherwise terminally dysfunctional Senate considered it. Acting in lockstep, senators rolled over the lone objector, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), who protested that the $225 million for Iron Dome was not offset by spending reductions elsewhere. The bill cleared the chamber by unanimous consent. Senators were ecstatic, according to Politico: “Reid [D-NV], [Senator Mitch] McConnell [R-KY] and Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) all shook hands after the Iron Dome money finally passed—an uncommon kumbaya moment in a bitterly divided Capitol.”
This profile in senatorial courage was very touching, and must have been deeply satisfying to billionaire political contributor Sheldon Adelson, who funds newspapers in Israel for the express purpose of supporting the Likud Party, and who has “auditioned” prospective GOP presidential candidates for their conformity with his views. As columnist Jim Newell wrote with minimal exaggeration, “It doesn’t matter which Congress it is, or how dysfunctional things get. If there was another Civil War and a batch of states seceded from the union but Israel still needed its war money, the two sides would call a cease-fire, the seceding states would temporarily rejoin the union, go to Congress to pass the funding, and then re-secede and continue fighting.”
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