The Senate on April 23 voted to pass a $95 billion national security package that includes foreign aid for the war-torn nations of Ukraine and Israel, as well as the Indo-Pacific. The bill also includes a measure to force TikTok to divest from its Chinese parent company to address national security concerns.
The bill will now go to the desk of President Joe Biden, who’s expected to quickly sign it.
It passed through the upper chamber in a 79–18 nighttime vote.
The aid package’s final clearance through Congress marked a win for President Biden, Democrats, and more hawkish Republicans supporting Ukraine aid. But conservatives have decried the package for its billions to Ukraine and lack of border security measures.
Earlier in the day, a motion to order cloture and limit debate on the funding package was passed by the Senate in an 80–19 vote.
President Biden, in a statement, celebrated the bill’s passage, calling it a “critical legislation” that “will make our nation and world more secure as we support our friends who are defending themselves against terrorists like Hamas and tyrants like Putin.”
Leadership in both parties was quick to heap praise on the bill, which has deadlocked Congress on the issue for months.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) framed it as a victory for Americans’ role in the world over what he described as “isolationism” within his own party.
“We can wish for a world where the responsibilities of leadership don’t fall on us,” Mr. McConnell said, “or we can act like we understand that they do.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) was ecstatic at the bill’s passage, saying, “Finally, finally, finally, after more than six months of hard work and many twists and turns in the road, America sends a message to the entire world: we will not turn our back on you.
“Tonight, we tell our allies ‘We stand with you,’” Mr. Schumer said. “We tell our adversaries, ‘Don’t mess with us.’”
Others in the upper chamber were less enthusiastic.
Asked his thoughts about the bill’s passage, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) said he felt “sick. Nauseated.”
Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) told The Epoch Times that the bill should have been paid for.
”We don’t pay for anything we pass around here, which is deplorable,“ Ms. Lummis said. ”It wasn’t paid for. So, presumably, it'll add to the debt. It’s another $95 billion to add to our already $34 trillion-plus debt. And if something is a crisis and a high priority, we should have the courage to pay for it, to cut spending elsewhere.”
Together, the package includes $61 billion for Ukraine, $8.1 billion for the Indo-Pacific, and $26.4 billion for Israel and humanitarian aid for Gaza. It also includes a measure forcing Chinese divestment of TikTok and allowing the government to give seized Russian assets to Ukraine.
In total, 15 of the “no” votes came from Republicans.
Two Democrats, Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.), in addition to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), an Independent who caucuses with Democrats, also opposed the legislation.
Mr. Sanders told The Epoch Times that his opposition was tied to the bill’s military funding for Israel.
“I voted no because I don’t think taxpayers in the United States should be continuing to supply Netanyahu’s war machine with more money,” Mr. Sanders said.
Borderless Package Rankles Republicans
The legislation faced fierce opposition from Republican members who felt that securing the southern border should take precedence over sending financial assistance to foreign countries, particularly Ukraine.The House package includes $300 million for Ukraine’s border patrol equivalent but nothing for U.S. border security funding or policy changes.
Speaking to The Epoch Times, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) asked “Why are we securing Ukraine’s border?”
Mr. Scott also cited the bill’s nearly $10 billion for humanitarian funding in Gaza and elsewhere as a reason for his opposition to the package, despite his desire to aid Israel.
Mr. Marshall said, “We needed to secure our own border first. So I’m horribly disappointed we didn’t secure our own border. I’m disappointed that leaders of both parties have been focused on Ukraine funding since day one and didn’t give enough attention to our own border. So I’m just sick about it.”
Mr. Marshall, like most Republican senators, expressed support for funding Israel but was opposed to some of the extras in the package.
Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) told The Epoch Times he was “sympathetic” to the causes of Taiwan, Ukraine, and Israel but said that the U.S. should be focusing on a fourth border in that package—its own.
“It doesn’t deal with that,” Mr. Budd said. “And that’s the problem, which is that we’re dealing with three other countries’ border issues and not our own.”
The issue has also been a concern in the House.
Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.), who was among the 55 Republicans who opposed the advancement of the foreign aid package in the lower chamber, argued that it was wrong for the United States to be securing the borders of other nations amid the ongoing crisis at the southern border with Mexico.
“We’re sending $300 million for the state border guard services of Ukraine ... yet won’t spend the same kind of money here to secure our own border,” Ms. Hageman said.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) took a different approach to the bill, telling reporters that there’s “no such thing as perfect legislation but this is definitely a step in the right direction.”
Some Senate Republicans are opposed to the whole Ukrainian enterprise.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told reporters ahead of the April 23 vote, “I see no possible strategy to win the war,” opining that any strategy to deliver a total Ukrainian victory risks escalation to nuclear war.
“Putin is not gonna lose this war,” Mr. Johnson argued.
He called Russian President Vladimir Putin “a bloody war criminal” but noted that Russia still has far more population and military capacity than Ukraine can hope to match and cited the failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive that’s ended in a “stalemate.”
Others have complained that passing Ukraine aid now effectively removes all leverage Republicans had over Democrats. Republicans once hoped to use Ukraine aid to force border concessions from Democrats.
“As the Senate passes on Tuesday what the House passed last night, we will have relinquished what little bargaining power we had left” to secure the border, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”
House Infighting Over Package
Still, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has insisted in comments to reporters that he felt bringing the bills to the House floor was the right move.“I’ve done here what I believe to be the right thing, and that is to allow the House to work its will. And as I’ve said, you do the right thing and you let the chips fall where they may,” he said after the package was passed.
Mr. Johnson’s willingness to join with Democrats on other recent bills had already fractured the House GOP and thrown his speakership into question. Now, with this latest move, he faces escalating blowback from some in the right flank.
“Speaker Johnson refuses to use his power as speaker of the House to do any type of negotiating to secure the southern border and stop the madness in our country,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) told Fox News.
Charging the speaker with betrayal, the congresswoman called on him to resign.
“Mike Johnson’s speakership is over. He needs to do the right thing—to resign and allow us to move forward in a controlled process. If he doesn’t do so, he will be vacated,” she said.
Her move to oust the speaker, she added, is “coming regardless of what Mike Johnson decides to do.”
Doubling down on her position on April 22, Ms. Greene said GOP voters were fed up with Republican leadership.
The congresswoman noted that the 2020 election angered Republicans because of the many election integrity concerns it raised. But now, she said, their anger has reached “a whole other level.”
“And here’s what really worries me,” she said. “They’re done with the Republican Party. They are absolutely done with Republican leadership like Mike Johnson, who totally sold us out to the Democrats.”
And that frustration could result in Republicans losing the House, Ms. Greene said, if the speaker is not held to account.
But Mr. Johnson, for his part, said he is unconcerned about the possibility of his removal.
“As I’ve said many times, I don’t walk around this building being worried about a motion to vacate,” he told reporters on April 20. “I have to do my job. We did.”
