Obama and Aid to Jordan
The Jordanian People Get the Wheat and the American taxpayers Get the Shaft
On Tuesday, President Obama bestowed a gift upon the King of Jordan – a pledge of $1 billion in additional US taxpayer-provided loan guarantees, grants and economic aid and a gift of 50,000 metric tons of wheat. This is on top of approximately $1 billion in foreign aid already given or promised to Jordan in FY 2010. His Majesty King Abdullah II politely thanked President Obama for his generosity.
Although it is good to be the King of Jordan, it is not so good to be the American taxpayer. President Obama is not dipping into his private stash of money to make this gift. The President is confiscating the property of the American taxpayers in order to provide loan guarantees, grants and wheat to the Jordanian King and, ostensibly, his subjects. President Obama and King Abdullah’s magnanimity is not their own – it is the American taxpayers’.
Kings have a long history of confiscating the wealth of their subjects and then doling a small part of it back to them in acts of "charity." That is what Kings do. But that is not what presidents of Republics, like the United States of America, should do. We fought a war against a British King because he confiscated too much of our property for his benefit. Yet, now our own President confiscates our property and gives it to a Jordanian King.
As President Obama reveals every day in his foreign and domestic policy, it is very easy for him to be magnanimous with other peoples’ money. I on the other hand believe the American taxpayer should not be compelled to hand over his hard-earned money to the King of Jordan. I think American taxpayers should be "permitted" by our government to keep our money and use it to do things like buy bread for our own families.
President Obama is not even using current taxpayer dollars to make this gift. President Obama is taking a loan from the Chinese government and using the loan proceeds to purchase wheat and then "gifting" that wheat to the King of Jordan. President Obama then makes the US taxpayers pay the bill. We have to repay the loan to the Chinese plus interest. The Jordanian people get the wheat while the American taxpayers get the shaft.
Even more problematic with the President’s gift is that our government is a bit short this month. We have a budget deficit this year of about $1.3 trillion. Our national debt exceeds $14 trillion. A couple of days ago we hit the limit on our credit card. In other words, we are broke. We cannot pay our bills due right now. The Secretary of the Treasury just stopped paying into the pensions of federal employees because he is out of money.
Yet, apparently, the President has found some extra money lying around the White House. Instead of using this money to pay some of our bills that are due right now, the President is giving this money to the King of Jordan. Also, why does the President have an extra 50,000 metric tons of wheat lying around? Is the President in the wheat farming business?
Because of the disastrous fiscal and monetary policies of this and past administrations and the Federal Reserve, Americans are confronting the highest sustained unemployment rate in over 60 years with millions of Americans out of work, an economy that is barely breathing and on the edge of falling back into the Great Recession and rising prices for basic necessities such as gasoline and bread.
Americans, like Jordanians, need bread to survive. More and more Americans are struggling to come up with enough money to buy bread. President Obama apparently has an extra 50,000 metric tons of wheat. Yet he will not allow this wheat to enter American grocery stores, which will lower the price of bread for the American people, and instead he gives our wheat to the Jordanian people and sends the bill to the American taxpayers.
When the French proletariat protested the sharp increase in the price of bread, caused by the massive cost to maintain the French Empire, their gracious Queen, Her Majesty Marie Antoinette, responded, "Let them eat cake." The American people are struggling to make ends meet and come up with enough money to pay the rising cost of bread. President Obama responds by saying, "Let the Jordanian people eat our bread instead."
Marc A. Scaringi is a candidate for the Republican nomination to the United States Senate in 2012
