Sens. Graham, DeMint face off over foreign aid

WASHINGTON — If Sen. Lindsey Graham wants to know why his foreign aid bill has stalled in the Senate, he need only look in the direction of the junior senator from his home state of South Carolina.

In an extraordinary clash between Republican senators from the same state, Sen. Jim DeMint forced Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to postpone consideration last week of the $53.3 billion foreign aid spending measure over DeMint's demand that it be debated by itself rather than combined with other spending measures.

"I respect and work well with Lindsey, and I share his goal to secure our homeland and advance America's interests abroad," DeMint told McClatchy. "But I will continue to object to out-of-control spending and insist we have a full debate on every spending bill."

DeMint's move was a setback for Graham, who's the senior Republican on the Senate appropriations foreign operations subcommittee, which funds aid to other countries, U.S. embassies and other State Department operations.

Graham has criticized GOP presidential candidates and other party leaders this year for what he describes as a growing isolationism that repudiates the muscular foreign policy of President Ronald Reagan.