A House Foreign Affairs committee member downplayed the political spat over a planned speech to Congress by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and told
Newsmax TV on Monday that Americans will benefit from hearing Netanyahu make the case against ever allowing a nuclear-armed Iran.
"I have a pretty good sense of what he's going to be saying, but I think it's really good for the American people to hear directly," Rep. Reid Ribble, vice chairman of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and emerging Threats, told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner and political commentator Carol Roth.
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Netanyahu is scheduled to speak to Congress on Tuesday despite objections — and planned boycotts — by the White House, State Department and some congressional Democrats.
Critics of the speech complain that Israel's leader went behind the president's back in accepting an invitation from House Speaker John Boehner. Netanyahu is expected to warn against trusting Israel's arch-enemy Iran in the nuclear talks that are a top priority for the Obama administration.
Ribble dismissed the supposedly political timing of the Netanyahu speech, with Israeli elections just two weeks away.
"We're not politicizing it," he said of the prime minister's visit. "How the Israelis view it, that's up to them."
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama is the one who is increasingly isolated in his feuding with longtime ally Israel and light-handed treatment of the Tehran regime, according to Ribble, a Wisconsin Republican who also sits on the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee for Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade.
"Clearly, the administration is going in one direction," said Ribble. "Congress and the American people are going another direction, and at some point there will be political pressure brought to bear."
Ribble predicted that foreign policy will be "one of the primary areas of discussion in the 2016 presidential campaign."
He also said that in welcoming Netanyahu to Capitol Hill, Congress is exercising its legitimate authority as a separate and co-equal branch of the federal government, and he noted than any deal reached with Iran will be subject to Senate approval.
Ribble said the political fights over Israel and Iran come down to the Obama administration's willingness to abandon a strategy — sanctions — that has succeeded in blocking Iran's attempts to develop nuclear weapons.
"Republicans as a general rule wanted to see the sanctions imposed and maybe even dialed up," he said.
"So there is some difference of opinion here," said Ribble, "and I don't think it's all that abnormal that Republicans or Democrats disagree."
Ribble also discussed the conflict over budgeting for the
Department of Homeland Security, which narrowly avoided a shutdown on Friday but faces another one this week.
"We'll find a path forward before then," he predicted.
Ribble said he recognizes that Republicans are losing the public relations battle as they seek to tie DHS funding to limits on the president's immigration decrees.
"But there's a principle of law here," he said. "On what basis can we go ahead and allow … the president to continue his illegal action when, in fact, a court has already said it's illegal, the Congress has said it's illegal, and the president for five-sixths of the time he's been in office has said it's illegal?"
"The president could end this tomorrow by simply saying, 'all right, funding and protecting 300 million Americans is more important than my illegal action on amnesty for 4 million undocumented workers in the country,' " said Ribble.
Ribble also discussed a letter he co-wrote to his leadership urging long-term funding for the nation's infrastructure. The letter has signatures from 285 members of Congress, Republican and Democrat.
"We ought to fund this thing completely, and we ought to get our act together on having a world-class, globally competitive national infrastructure," he said. "And that's what we wanted to show … that the support for the Congress is here to do it."
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