Portman to meet with Netanyahu in Israel

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio.

/ AP

(CBS News) Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, who is believed to be a top choice as a potential running mate for presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney, will travel this week to Israel, where he will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The news, first reported by ABC, was confirmed to CBS News/National Journal by a source familiar with the meeting.

Portman will be traveling with a bipartisan delegation of legislators in his capacity as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and as ranking member of the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities. The meeting with Netanyahu, however, is a solo affair for Portman.

Previous international travel as a member of the Senate has taken Portman to Afghanistan, South Korea and India as part of a delegation that included Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. He last traveled to Israel in January 2010 as a private citizen.

Portman also had experience dealing with international leaders from his time as the U.S. trade representative during George W. Bush's presidency.

The Ohio senator is not the only possible vice-presidential candidate to be traveling abroad this week. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio made a trip to the U.S. Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in his capacity as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee to conduct oversight of the facility, tour the base, and meet with the commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo Bay.

[notMormonOrABishop]

The USA and all Americans could do much much worse than having Senator Rob Portman as the Vice President .. for example, were Ron Paul to escape from Texas's 14th Congressional District.

[aquariousminus1]

My first thought upon reading this was that Natalie Portman was meeting with Netanyahu.

[Nocults]

She has more dignity than to grovel for a few million Jewish votes.

[retm-w]

Funny Portman has time to go on junkets, yet doesn't have time to respond to his constituents.

[slownewsday_6000]

Of course he's meeting with them.

Portman will be Romney's running mate, and Romney has said his first state visit as president would be to visit Jerusalem.

[Nocults]

First thing on the Bishops agenda will be to deliver more U.S. taxpayer subsidies to Nutsandyahoo.

Sources: CRS Report RL33222: U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel, updated Jan. 2, 2008, plus the FY '08 omnibus appropriations bill, H.R. 2764.
This estimate of total U.S. direct aid to Israel updates the estimate given in the July 2006 issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. It is an estimate because arriving at an exact figure is not possible, since parts of U.S. aid to Israel are a) buried in the budgets of various U.S. agencies, mostly that of the Defense Department (DOD), or b) in a form not easily quantifiable, such as the early disbursement of aid, giving Israel a direct benefit in interest income and the U.S. Treasury a corresponding loss. Given these caveats, our current estimate of cumulative total direct aid to Israel is $113.8554 billion.
It must be emphasized that this analysis is a conservative, defensible accounting of U.S. direct aid to Israel, NOT of Israel's cost to the U.S. or the American taxpayer, nor of the benefits to Israel of U.S. aid. The distinction is important, because the indirect or consequential costs suffered by the U.S. as a result of its blind support for Israel exceed by many times the substantial amount of direct aid to Israel. (See, for example, the late Thomas R. Stauffer's article in the June 2003 Washington Report, "The Costs to American Taxpayers of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: $3 Trillion.")