Nathaniel Powell

The Israeli government is well able to fund the Iron Dome system, which has proven critical to keep innocent civilians safe from rocket attacks and bombardment. Consistent with my voting record to date, I will not support Congress sending more taxpayer dollars and military aid to a government that consistently ignores international law and U.S. law. Netanyahu’s allies in the Knesset just approved a $45 billion defense budget, and the Prime Minister himself also asserted his interest in withdrawing from the MOU with the United States in January. It is fully within their ability to fund Iron Dome and other defensive systems. Our allies who need our military aid must understand that we will provide it consistent with the Leahy amendment and the foreign assistance act.

Let me repeat again what I said yesterday: Muhoza and Grier do not prove SAPs “worked.” Muhoza studies trade liberalization in Africa, not SAPs as full programs, and she says the effects on growth “remain ambiguous” and any gains are “conditional on institutional quality.” That is not a verdict of SAP success. Grier & Grier look at fiscal and monetary stabilization in Latin America, not African SAPs, and only at short-run stabilization, not poverty, structural change, or state capacity. The institutions that designed SAPs were blunt about this. The World Bank’s OED found the “link between adjustment lending and improved economic performance is weak” and that “the social costs of adjustment have been higher than anticipated”; by 1992 it still reported “mixed results” and inadequate safety nets. The IMF IEO later found conditionality was “overly ambitious,” ownership “weak,” and consolidation often “too rapid". Easterly found no poverty reduction and evidence of higher inequality. Even Ghana that some people tried to push as an example that worked is overstated: Botchwey said the 1984 rebound reflected recovery from the “extraordinarily low base of 1983”; Teal argued much of it was aid- and recovery-driven, not reform-led. Bottom line: no serious reading of this literature supports the claim that SAPs delivered sustained development.

You need either a low iq or low integrity to portray an analyst’s risk scenario as a prediction.

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