"Dead on Arrival."

Those were the words used by Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton on Friday to describe what he predicts will be the fate of Joe Biden's new request for $105 billion in foreign aid, which includes $3.5 billion for Gaza, as the Israel-Hamas War continues to rage. 

Moreover, Cotton went bottom-line about the $3.5 billion, which he suggested would function as a resupply line for Hamas, in addition to blasting Biden's request for another $11.8 billion for Ukraine, as its war with Russia drags on. Cotton said in a press release:

President Biden’s slush fund proposal is dead on arrival, just like his budgets. We will not spend, for example, $3.5 billion to address the "potential needs of Gazans," essentially functioning as a resupply line for Hamas terrorists.

We will also not spend $11.8 billion to fund the Ukrainian government’s own non-war spending, such as funding retirement pensions for Ukrainian government employees. Nor will we spend $4.7 billion for housing, transportation, and ‘services’ for illegal aliens in the United States rather than deporting them.

The Biden proposal is going nowhere, and Senate Republicans will take the lead on crafting a funding bill that protects Americans and their interests.

With respect to Cotton's comments about Hamas, the terrorist organization has been the de facto authority in Gaza, home to roughly two million Palestinians, since 2007. Hamas published its charter in 1988, which called for the destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic society in historic Palestine.

That objective of Hamas has not changed.

As for talk of ceasefires, peace talks, and such, former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir is credited with the following statement, although there is no primary source that validates the quote as hers — which doesn't negate or diminish its reality:

You cannot negotiate peace with someone who has come to kill you.

Yet virtually every time Israel responds militarily to unprovoked attacks by Hamas, Democrats dutifully line up to call for restraint from the Jewish state vs. the Islamist terrorists. 

Enter, Joe Biden

As we reported on Friday, Biden delivered a rambling Thursday night speech to the nation, in which he said he would ask Congress for the massive appropriations.

American leadership is what holds the world together. American alliances are what keep us – America – safe. American values are what make us a partner that other nations want to work with. To put all that at risk if we walk away from Ukraine, we turn our backs on Israel – it's just not worth it.

Every word of which would be true — except for the reference to Ukraine, which has become a virtual black hole for U.S. taxpayer money. But from Joe Biden, and his equally disastrous administration, those words were merely hollow, boilerplate tripe.

Anyway, Biden's proposal now heads to Congress, where it will sit dead in the water as long as the House remains Speaker-less — given that 3-ring circus. 

While I won't revisit my thoughts on the cluster currently underway within the House Republican caucus, or who's principally to blame for it, I will say the following.  

Past Republican Speakers — John Boehner, Paul Ryan, and to a lesser extent, Kevin McCarthy — followed basically the same path: 

Tough talk during appearances on media outlets, and before reporters and camera crews, about how they're going to stand up to the Democrats and their drunken-sailor spending requests, but when the rubber hit the road, they folded up like cheap suits.

The Bottom Line

Assuming that the Republicans finally settle on a Speaker nominee who can secure the necessary vote to win the gavel, it would be a hell of a good first act to shove Biden's supplemental spending request right up... down his throat.