House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., vowed to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Capitol Hill in Washington if President Joe Biden continued to refuse to host the leader at the White House, The Jerusalem Post reported on Monday.
"It's been too long," McCarthy told the Hebrew daily Yisrael Hayom on the first day of his two-day trip to Israel. "If that doesn't happen, I'll invite the prime minister to come meet with the House. He's a dear friend, as a prime minister of a country that we have our closest ties with."
McCarthy was in Israel with a bipartisan delegation of 19 other House members to celebrate the country's 75th anniversary.
The speaker's visit came during tense political situations in both countries, The Washington Post reported.
Biden said he had no plans at this time to offer the traditional visit of a new Israeli prime minister to the Oval Office (Netanyahu became prime minister again four months ago) in an apparent criticism of his government's controversial push to gain greater control over the Israeli Supreme Court, while the president and McCarthy are fighting over the attempt to increase the government's debt limit, with Biden refusing to negotiate spending cuts sought by House Republicans.
McCarthy, saying the prime minister was in good company, pointed out that Biden was also snubbing House Republicans. "President Biden hasn't talked to me about the debt ceiling for the last 80 some days or so," The Washington Post reported.
McCarthy's suggestion that Netanyahu visit the GOP-controlled Congress was a reminder of an earlier frosty relationship between the prime minister and a Democrat president. In 2015, as Netanyahu was openly against President Barack Obama's plans to negotiate a nuclear arms agreement with Iran, the prime minister arranged with Republican leaders to give an address to a joint meeting of Congress against the deal.
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.
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