What is more important at this time, Trump or Pelosi winning a war of wills? This has gone on long enough. People are being hurt along with national security. The Coast Guard is not being paid that alone is reason enough to fund the government, and fight over the need for a wall later. I call upon the President and Speaker to end this shutdown before really serious damage is done to the country.
My other suggestion is No member of the government from the president down to the lowest federal worker including Congress should be paid during a shutdown. That alone should end this partisan insanity.
Last edited by Eagle_Eye; 01-20-2019 at 08:43 AM.
Frank Apisa (01-20-2019), USFREEDOM911 (01-20-2019)
Congress approval rating is 18%
There approval rating has not been above 30% since August 2009.
The last time Congress approval rating reached 50% was February 2003.
Jarod (01-22-2019)
kudzu (01-20-2019)
So you say.
On Jan. 16, 2016, the same day four American detainees, including The Washington Post’s Jason Rezaian, were released, a jumbo jet carrying $400 million in euros, Swiss francs and other currencies landed in Tehran. That money purportedly was partial payment of an outstanding claim by Iran for U.S. military equipment that was never delivered. Soon after, $1.3 billion in cash followed.
The cash transaction was controversial even within the administration. The Wall Street Journal reported that the head of the Justice Department’s national-security division objected that it would look like a ransom payment. State Department officials insisted the negotiations over the claims and detainees were not connected but came together at the same time, with the cash payment used as “leverage” to ensure the release of detainees.
Before the 1979 revolution, Iran under the shah was reputedly the biggest buyer of U.S. military equipment, depositing funds for potential deals in a Defense Department account. When Iran seized U.S. Embassy staffers as hostages, the military sales account was frozen. The issue — and other outstanding claims — has been litigated ever since through a claims tribunal established in The Hague. Some of the money in the account was used to pay American companies whose contracts were canceled, but by 2000, about $400 million was left in what was known as the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) Trust Fund account.
That is when the families of victims of Iranian-linked terrorism who had won court cases stepped in. They were unable to force Iran to pay the judgments, but Stephen Flatow, the father of a woman killed in a 1995 militant attack in Gaza, discovered the FMS trust fund and sought payment from it.
Congress passed a law in 2000 under which the U.S. Treasury could pay compensatory judgments (plus a portion of punitive damages) issued for claims against Iran (as well as Cuba). All told, about $400 million was paid out in relation to court judgments against Iran covered by the law and subsequent legislation in 2002 — about the equivalent of what was in the FMS trust fund. That is because the amount in the FMS trust fund essentially provided a cap on what would be paid out to those judgment holders who were eligible for compensation under the law. (The family of Alisa Flatow, for instance, received $26 million, which was used to establish a scholarship fund.)
The law, Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA), said that upon payment, the claims of those individual judgment holders were “subrogated” to the United States. That means the claims of those individuals essentially became the claims of the United States government vis-a-vis the foreign state — in this case, Iran.
This is the actual text, with the key portions highlighted:
“(c) SUBROGATION. — Upon payment under subsection (a) with respect to payments in connection with a Foreign Military Sales Program account, the United States shall be fully subrogated, to the extent of the payments, to all rights of the person paid under that subsection against the debtor foreign state. The President shall pursue these subrogated rights as claims or offsets of the United States in appropriate ways, including any negotiation process which precedes the normalization of relations between the foreign state designated as a state sponsor of terrorism and the United States, except that no funds shall be paid to Iran, or released to Iran, from property blocked under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act or from the Foreign Military Sales Fund, until such subrogated claims have been dealt with to the satisfaction of the United States.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/03/01/was-obamas-1-7-billion-cash-deal-with-iran-prohibited-by-u-s-law/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7b836b3ce0ed
You have zero credibility.
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