What is the current outstanding balance and recent usage history of U.S. loan guarantees available to Israel?
Executive summary
The outstanding U.S. loan guarantee authority available to Israel is reported inconsistently across sources—many longstanding summaries list roughly $3.8 billion of unused authority, while some reporting places available guarantees and past drawdowns in the $9–10 billion range depending on which tranche and offsets are counted [1] [2] [3]. Recent congressional action has reauthorized the program into the coming decade, but public summaries and NGO accounts differ on exactly how much guarantee authority remains and how much Israel has actually borrowed against it [4] [2].
1. What the headline numbers show: multiple historical tranches and commonly cited balances
U.S. loan guarantees to Israel began in earlier decades (including a $10 billion package in the early 1990s) and were supplemented by a $9 billion authority created in 2003; standard public summaries frequently report that, after various extensions and carryovers, roughly $3.8 billion in loan guarantee authority remained unused at certain checkpoints [5] [6] [1] [7]. Other summaries aggregate different authorizations and offsets and report larger pools—IMEU’s compilation states that $9.26 billion remained available against which Israel had borrowed about $6.6 billion, producing a different view of “available” authority [2].
2. Recent usage history: what’s been drawn and when
Public accounts indicate Israel has drawn on loan guarantee authorities at different moments—borrowing against both the 1992 and 2003 packages to finance immigration absorption, housing and economic needs—but the precise recent year-by-year drawdowns are not fully reconciled in the public summaries provided here; one source says Israel had borrowed roughly $6.6 billion against guarantees in its accounting [8] [5] [2]. Multiple sources emphasize that historically the United States was never called to pay on guarantees when Israel repaid its commercial borrowings, and that guarantees function to lower Israel’s borrowing costs rather than being direct outlays [1] [6] [8].
3. Legislative and policy status: reauthorizations and conditions
Congress has periodically extended and reauthorized loan guarantee authority—most recently, congressional material notes the program was reauthorized through 2030 as part of broader Israel-related legislation and contains caps and conditions tied to Foreign Military Financing and other Israel-specific provisions [4]. U.S. statutory language also shows that earlier authorizations carried time limits and rules for reductions tied to Israeli actions deemed inconsistent with program objectives, demonstrating that the program’s legal parameters and available authority can change based on law and administration determinations [9] [10].
4. Why accounts diverge: definitions, offsets and what “available” means
Differences in reported totals stem largely from whether sources aggregate multiple authorizations (1992’s $10 billion, 2003’s $9 billion, later carryovers), apply offsets (for example, deductions Congress or the Administration made for activities judged inconsistent), or report what remains after Israel has already borrowed; one source treats remaining authority before offsets as $3.8 billion while another treats a broader pool and shows $9.26 billion available with $6.6 billion drawn—both can be correct depending on accounting conventions [1] [2] [7] [8].
5. What the available reporting does not resolve
The public sources provided do not supply a single, transparent ledger showing each issuance, repayment and offset by fiscal year that would reconcile the $3.8B and $9.26B figures; nor do they fully break out which guarantees remain authorized but unissued versus already committed or drawn down in commercial markets, leaving a measurement ambiguity across reputable summaries [2] [1] [8]. Absent a consolidated Treasury or Treasury/Government Accountability Office table published in the materials provided here, precise current outstanding guarantee exposure and year-to-year usage cannot be pinned down beyond the ranges and snapshots cited.
6. Bottom line
Authoritative public summaries converge on the policy point—U.S. loan guarantees have been a recurring tool to lower Israel’s borrowing costs and have been subject to periodic reauthorization—but diverge numerically: commonly cited snapshots put remaining authority near $3.8 billion, while alternative aggregations yield roughly $9+ billion of authority with several billion already drawn [1] [2] [7]; Congress has reauthorized the program into 2030, keeping the mechanism available [4]. The reporting provided here supports confident statements about the program’s purpose, history and ongoing legal authorization but does not resolve a single up-to-date line-item ledger of outstanding principal exposure without consulting Treasury/GAO accounting or a current CRS/Government table not included among the supplied sources [9] [11].