…When Congress has had to choose between providing funds for Israel and for America’s cities, it has strictly been no contest. Whereas, by the summer of 1992, 240 members of the House had signed a letter urging Pres. Bush to quickly submit legislation authorizing the $10 billion in loan guarantees to Congress, only 35 of her House colleagues joined Los Angeles’s Maxine Waters in co-sponsoring a bill, H.R. 5747, on July 31, 1992, which would have authorized the granting of $10 billion in development loan guarantees to American cities.
Waters’ had attempted to add the domestic loan guarantees to the �Freedom Support Act,� authorizing assistance to the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, but was stymied when the House adopted a closure rule by a voice vote which prevented amendments from being added to the bill.
In defense of her proposal, Waters stated: �We are on the brink of funding aid to Russia and a $10 billion loan guarantee for Israel. I certainly understand the difficulties faced by Russia � their economy has collapsed � and Israel � they must absorb tens of thousands of new immigrants. However, our cities deserve preference� I would hope to see this plan adopted before we aid any foreign government.� Only AIPAC’s Near East Report, on Aug. 17, 1992, carried the story. One can imagine what might have happened had it been reported by the mainstream media.
In 1991, when Waters circulated her letter, the US economy was much like it is today. Six out of ten US cities were unable to meet their budgets and several states their payrolls. In March of that year, over the objections of President Bush, the House voted by a 397-24 margin to give Israel $650 million in cash as part of the Gulf War emergency spending bill. Bush had publicly threatened to veto the bill but backed down when he realized it would be overridden… More