After months of arduous, closed-door negotiations, senators on Sunday released the details of a bipartisan $118.2 billion aid proposal for Ukraine, Israel and the U.S. southern border.
The long-awaited bill calls for $60.1 billion in aid to Ukraine, $14.1 billion for Israel and $20.2 billion to improve security at the U.S. border. It also includes smaller funding packages for humanitarian assistance in war zones and defense operations in the Red Sea and Taiwan.
President Joe Biden initially proposed a relief package worth more than $105 billion in October. The Senate’s new deal roughly matches the funding shares Biden requested for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
The key difference in the new proposal is more than $13 billion in increased funding for border security, which was a key point of contention in months-long Senate negotiations.
Republicans have criticized the Biden administration for its handling of the border, which has seen record numbers of migrant crossings in recent months. Democrats have countered that the president needs more executive authority to impose more aggressive border security.
The president said Sunday that he supports the Senate’s bipartisan proposal, including language that gives him “new emergency powers to close the border if it becomes overwhelmed.”
“I call on Congress to come together and quickly pass this bipartisan agreement. Bring it to my desk so I can sign it into law immediately,” Biden said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said a vote on the bill is scheduled for Wednesday.
The bill’s release represents a small victory for Senate negotiators, who have gone back and forth for months trying to reach an agreement.
“I know the overwhelming majority of senators want to get this done, and it will take bipartisan collaboration to move forward quickly,” Schumer said in a statement after releasing the proposal. “Senators must tune out the noise of those who want this deal to fail because of their own political agendas.”
Once the Senate’s reluctance is over, the proposal faces its next big fight: Republicans in the House.
Republican lawmakers have prepared to greet the Senate bill with hostility.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., announced a House proposal Saturday that would fund only Israel, an apparent attempt to preempt the Senate’s broader foreign aid bill. Johnson said the House will vote on the bill next week.
The White House criticized the House counterproposal, calling it a political ploy.
“We view it as a ploy that is currently being proposed on the House side, rather than a serious attempt to deal with the national security challenges facing America,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday on NBC’s ” Meet the Press.” “In our view, Israel’s security should be sacred. It should not be part of a political game.”
Despite the White House’s allegations, the financing package has increasingly become a political football in recent weeks.
With the election in full swing, Republican lawmakers who once appeared willing to compromise are suddenly reacting coldly to the deal, knowing its passage would mean a comfortable victory for the Biden 2024 campaign.
Johnson was a prime example of the change in tone.
In mid-January, he met with Biden and Schumer for what he called a “productive” meeting specifically on border negotiations. After the meeting, Johnson, in an expression of bipartisan hope, said officials had reached a degree of “consensus.”
But former president and GOP front-runner Donald Trump has reportedly pressured Republicans to torpedo the deal so he can continue to use the border crisis as a line of attack in his campaign.
In a Sunday interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Johnson denied that Trump had exerted any outside influence: “He doesn’t call the shots. I set the tone for the House of Representatives.”
But a week after Johnson’s optimistic meeting with Schumer and Biden, the speaker changed course and expressed cynicism about the deal.
“If rumors about the contents of the draft proposal were true, it would have been dead by the time it arrived in the House anyway,” Johnson wrote in a letter to colleagues in late January.
The White House reported the change in sentiment.
“Suddenly we heard a change in mood,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a recent briefing. “Actually tackle the problem instead of playing politics with it.”
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
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2024-02-05 00:40:19
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