Biden’s Supplemental War Games

The upside to the House GOP’s 22 days of paralysis is that the election of Speaker Mike Johnson offers a reset. That ought to mean a fresh approach to the spending battle, one based on a powerful rallying cry that too many Republicans have forgotten: “priorities.” The White House is offering the perfect assist, having shipped to Congress the past week a $106 billion supplemental appropriation request for Ukraine, Israel and the border, followed by a separate demand for $56 billion in fictitious “emergency” spending—which it hopes gets wrapped together. Dollars to defeat Russian and Iranian aggression are necessary. Yet with $33 trillion in debt, there is no room for both guns and butter. If President Biden intends to backstop two foreign wars, the obvious concession is a substantive reduction of domestic spending. According to the White House, it is “critical” that the Federal Communications Commission get another $6 billion for the Affordable Connectivity Program, a fraud-racked Covid-era boondoggle that aimed to close the “digital divide” but has in reality blown $17 billion subsidizing the Netflix habits of people who already had high-speed broadband. Nary a dime of this is justifiable, which helpfully provides House Republicans the opportunity to draw new lines in the name of priorities. One step is to identify clearly and toss out any provision that doesn’t truly count as emergency spending or directly relate to Ukraine or Israel. Another is to make clear that Democrats will be required to make choices, and that money to counter growing international threats will require the White House and Senate Democrats to swallow even deeper cuts in upcoming appropriations bills than those in the spring debt-ceiling deal.