Senate Passes $95B Package With Aid for Ukraine and Israel
The Senate passed a $95 billion foreign aid package for Israel and Ukraine before sunrise Tuesday, with the bill now heading to the GOP-controlled House where Speaker Mike Johnson indicated the measure may never see the light of day.
The bill, which also includes funding for Taiwan, passed in a 70-29 vote with 22 Republican senators siding with the majority of Democrats in supporting the legislation. A group of conservative lawmakers stridently opposed to the proposed $60 billion for Ukraine spoke in a series of speeches through the night decrying the plans, while two Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) voted no out of concerns about Israel’s devastating war against Hamas in Gaza.
Mike Johnson Signals He’ll Torpedo Senate’s Foreign Aid Package
“With the passage of this national security bill, the Senate is telling Putin he will regret the day he questioned America’s resolve,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said, adding that it sent “a clear bipartisan message of resolve to our allies in NATO.”
News of the result was welcomed by Ukraine, which is currently calling for more support amid battlefield shortages. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed his thanks to Schumer, Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, and every other U.S. senator who backed further support for Kyiv. “For us in Ukraine, continued U.S. assistance helps to save human lives from Russian terror,” he said. “It means that life will continue in our cities and will triumph over war.”
The legislation may have succeeded in the Senate despite vociferous opposition from the 2024 GOP frontrunner Donald Trump and his loyalists, but it now faces even stronger headwinds in the Republican-controlled House. Speaker Johnson (R-LA) signaled he would not bring the bill to the floor for a vote in its current form, bemoaning a lack of provisions to address illegal migration across the southern border.
“[I]n the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters,” Johnson said in a statement late Monday. “America deserves better than the Senate’s status quo.”
Nevertheless, Schumer said he believes the legislation would receive bipartisan support in the House if it does come to a vote. “The House, I assume, is going to move on something,” Sen. John Thune (R-SD), the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, said. “Obviously, they’re going to address Israel.”
In addition to the $60 billion for Ukraine, the package also provides $14 billion for Israel and another $9 billion for humanitarian assistance—including to civilians in Gaza and the West Bank. It would also give support to Taiwan and partners in the Indo-Pacific amid tensions with China.
Language about increased support for border enforcement was removed last week after Trump and other leading Republicans criticized the domestic security proposals as being insufficiently restrictive. Conservative Senators ultimately blocked the bipartisan border deal, which had come after months of negotiations, leaving leaders to push forward with the foreign aid package on its own as Democrats had originally wanted.
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