Interesting
Jun 24th, 2007 at 7:15 am by Susie
Why were we giving money to people who already had so much, anyway?
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US House of Representatives has voted to deny all aid to Saudi Arabia, despite repeated assurances by the administration the desert kingdom was cooperating with the United States in the war on terror.
The ban is contained in a little-publicized amendment quietly slipped by a bipartisan group of lawmakers into a 34.2-billion-dollar bill financing US foreign operations in fiscal 2008. The massive bill, featuring a wide range of humanitarian programs, was approved by lawmakers in the middle of the night on Friday.
Similar measures on aid to Saudi Arabia have been passed by the House before. But the current one goes a step further by closing a legislative loophole that in the past had allowed the administration of President George W. Bush to waive these bans by invoking requirements of the war on terror.
The amendment, championed by New York Democrat Anthony Weiner, a strong supporter of Israel, states that “none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available” by the foreign operations bill “shall be obligated or expended to finance any assistance to Saudi Arabia” or “used to execute a waiver.”
