US Senator Landrieu: Don’t cut aid to Israel

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“I support the aid to Israel and we are going to hold the line on that,” Sen. Landrieu told The Media Line. “There are pressures on our budget, but we really value our relationship with Israel and want to see it strengthened. America does have very serious budgetary problems, but foreign aid represents less than one percent of the total budget of the United States.”

Landrieu, a member of US President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party, spoke to The Media Line during a visit to Israel as head of a trade mission seeking collaboration opportunities in oil and gas development with Louisiana and other US Gulf Coast states.

Louisiana has 80% of the US off shore oil and gas operations, but suffered enormous damage to the gulf ecosystem with last year’s BP Deepwater Horizon spilled more than 200 million gallons of crude oil in the gulf. Still, Louisiana has some of the world’s leading companies that deal in developing oil and gas ventures, something Israel could benefit from in its efforts to extract the massive natural gas deposits found offshore.

The US Geological Survey last year estimated that more than 122 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas reserves lie under the waters of the eastern Mediterranean, most of it within Israeli waters. The fields are so large that plans are afloat to team up in order to seek investors. An official at the National Infrastructures Ministry confirmed reports that its director-general, Shaul Tzemach, had been promoting an initiative for Israel and Cyprus to run a joint campaign to attract American investors for developing the natural gas fields.

http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=243268

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And, this is why we invest with our trade partners, like Israel: Jobs.