Republicans should support the foreign aid bill put forward by the Senate because it bolsters the industrial capacity of the United States to protect itself, Sen. Dan Sullivan told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” Sunday.
The Alaska Republican said his fellow members of the GOP need to look at this legislation in a different way, emphasizing that “it’s less a foreign aid package and more a package about rebuilding our own industrial capacity to build weapons for ourselves.”
The senator stressed that 60% of the funds in the supplemental spending bill “goes into our ability to build weapons for America,” pointing out that “almost 40% of our attack subs are in maintenance right now.”
“We don’t have the industrial capacity to protect ourselves,” Sullivan said. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping is scared to death of American subs. This supplemental unlocks $6 billion for our sub capacity to build subs, $5 billion to produce 155-millimeter howitzer rounds, and everything in between — javelins, stingers, tomahawks.”
He said that “this is about our industrial capacity to protect America first,” as well as getting “some of these weapons to our allies who are facing existential threats.”
The senator emphasized that “we need a strategic response” to this “very dangerous time” and criticized the Biden administration for reducing the defense budget every year adjusted for inflation, as well as cutting Homeland Security.
“Right now, if you look around the world, you see chaos,” Sullivan said. “And a lot of that, in my view, has been driven by the Biden administration’s weakness.”
The senator said this contrasts greatly with the Trump administration, which, together with the Senate, brought “military readiness back” and unleashed “another element of American power, and that’s American energy. So these are all strong elements of the Trump administration record working with Republicans that made us stronger.”
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
