Senate passes $95B aid package for Ukraine and Israel, but fate in House is uncertain
The Senate on Tuesday finally passed a sweeping $95 billion supplemental package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan in a decisive 70-29 vote — but the bill is expected to be all but DOA when it hits the House.
After months of strife over whether to OK the controversial aid package, senators burned through the midnight oil and overcame a filibuster to approve it in the wee hours Tuesday.
But the bill — which does not include provisions to crack down on lawless border crossings — now faces a seemingly improbable pathway through the GOP-controlled House of Representatives given the vocal opposition from as Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).
“I hope the speaker will find a way to allow the House to work its will on the issue of Ukraine aid and the other parts of the bill as well,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday, according to Politico.
“History settles every account,” McConnell added in a statement after the bill’s passage. “And today, on the value of American leadership and strength, history will record that the Senate did not blink.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said it would be a “clear bipartisan message of resolve to our allies in NATO” if the bill is brought to the House floor for a vote and approved.
“With this bill, the Senate declares that American leadership will not waiver, will not falter, will not fail,’’ Schumer said.
The bill’s passage through the Senate was a welcome sign for Ukraine as it grapples with critical shortages on the battlefield.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) in December that all international military assistance funding would run out in February.
About $60 billion in the bill would go to supporting Ukraine, with nearly $14 billion to rearm its military through the purchase of weapons and munitions and another nearly $15 billion for training and intelligence sharing.
Another $8 billion would go to help Ukraine’s government continue basic operations with a prohibition on money going toward pensions. And there’s about $1.6 billion to help Ukraine’s private sector.
But Johnson said in a statement Tuesday, “The mandate of national security supplemental legislation was to secure America’s own border before sending additional foreign aid around the world.
“Now, in 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.”
House Republican leaders have pointed to their own bill, H.R. 2, for containing the necessary items in any passable package: both border control crackdowns and international aid.
Congressional Democrats have dismissed it as a non-starter.
Johnson approves of additional military assistance to Ukraine but has noted the White House’s failure to outline an end game for the war or accountability measures for how US taxpayer dollars are being spent on it.
Former President Donald Trump had also attacked the national security package for being a “great gift to the Democrats” in an election year.
The previous $118 billion proposed Senate bill was killed in the chamber last week in a 49-50 vote, far below the 60-vote threshold needed to clear a filibuster.
Democrats and the White House quickly accused Republicans of torpedoing the deal for political purposes and a desire to preserve the border crisis as an issue for the presidential election in November.
Many House Republicans have opposed the new Senate aid bill and are unlikely to cross Trump to change their tune, but some key GOP lawmakers have signaled they will push to get it passed.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) traveled to Ukraine last week with a bipartisan delegation and met with Zelensky.
Turner posted on X after the trip, “I reiterated America’s commitment to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia.”
In the Senate, despite both the opposition from the House GOP and Trump’s complaints that the bill wasn’t set up as a loan, 22 Republican senators backed it, marking an uptick in support from the weekend when the upper chamber advanced the measure through procedural hurdles.
But Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), a close Trump ally, argued that the US should help broker an end to the war with Putin since Russia is the “more powerful country,” and spoke alongside Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and others until daybreak.
In an unusually raw back-and-forth, GOP senators who support the aid challenged some of the opponents directly on the floor.
North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis angrily rebutted some of their arguments, noting that the money would only help Ukraine for less than a year.
“Why am I so focused on this vote?” Tillis said. “Because I don’t want to be on the pages of history that we will regret if we walk away. You will see the alliance that is supporting Ukraine crumble. You will ultimately see China become emboldened. And I am not going to be on that page of history.”
Opposition among Democrat-aligned senators also grew slightly, with Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) voting against continuing military aid to Israel over the civilian death toll in Gaza. voting against it.
“I cannot in good conscience support sending billions of additional taxpayer dollars for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s military campaign in Gaza,” Welch said on the Senate floor before the vote.
While the slimmed-down foreign aid bill eventually won a healthy showing of GOP support, several Republicans who had previously expressed support for Ukraine voted against it, including Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford.
“Months ago, Republicans agreed to work across the aisle to force as many significant changes as possible to our weak asylum laws and put pressure on the Biden Administration to enforce the law,” Lankford said in a statement.
“When the moment of decision finally came, the political conversation suddenly shifted to everything must be addressed on the border or nothing be addressed on the border. In the real world, that means nothing gets fixed on our border,” he said.
“Well over 6,000 illegal migrants crossed the southern border yesterday and they will again today, because nothing changed.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed the Senate for advancing the supplemental.
“I am grateful to @SenSchumer, @LeaderMcConnell, and every US Senator who has supported continued assistance to Ukraine as we fight for freedom, democracy, and the values we all hold dear,” Zelensky said.
“For us in Ukraine, continued US assistance helps to save human lives from Russian terror. It means that life will continue in our cities and will triumph over war.”
The Senate spent roughly four months trying to appease Republican demands on border security before passing the aid bill.
Schumer promptly took up a supplemental bill sans the border security provisions after the original package went up in flames.
But given Johnson’s opposition, it will be difficult to take the measure up for a vote on the House floor.
However, some Democrats have dangled a rarely used parliamentary procedure called a discharge petition as a possible workaround — a maneuver that last succeeded in the House during a 2015 vote to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank of the US.
Under a discharge petition, Democrats will need to get a majority in the House in order for it to get to the floor for a vote without the speaker’s blessing.
What is included in the Senate $95 billion aid package
- The Senate passed a $95.3 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan early Tuesday.
- Included in the package is $8 billion for Ukraine and its war against Russia, $14 billion for Israel’s war with Hamas, $8 billion for Taiwan and partners in the Indo-Pacific to counter China, and $9.2 billion in humanitarian assistance for Gaza.
- This comes after months of negotiations and growing political divisions in the Republican Party over the role of the US abroad.
- 22 Republicans voted with nearly all Democrats to pass the package 70-29, with supporters arguing that abandoning Ukraine could threaten national security across the globe.
- “History settles every account,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a statement after the bill’s passage. “And today, on the value of American leadership and strength, history will record that the Senate did not blink.”
This means they will need to peel off Republicans, although just how many remains up in the air.
“All options are on the table,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) told a reporter during a Tuesday afternoon press conference when asked about a possible discharge petition.
“We’re going to have a conversation in our leadership meeting today,” Jeffries said, followed by a caucus meeting Wednesday to discuss “precise steps.”
The parliamentary technique has rarely been used successfully in recent years.
President Biden had requested Congress re-up roughly $24 billion in spending to Ukraine in August of last year but it declined to do so.
Then in October, he pushed Congress to pass a $106 billion package featuring aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Indo-Pacific allies, as well as funding for the border.
The Pentagon has warned that funding for war-torn Ukraine has run dry.
Following the passage of the supplemental, the Senate gaveled out and is expected to return Feb. 26.
The House is back in session Tuesday.
With Post wires
