U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) speaks during the Democratic Caucus’ weekly lunch press conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., on February 6, 2024.
Amanda Andrade-Rose | Reuters
Senators pushed forward a foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan on Thursday, gathering momentum for a funding package that has been a persistent thorn in federal budget talks for the past few months.
Final score 67-32. senator He voted in favor of starting discussions on a $95 billion aid package to fund humanitarian assistance in Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and other war-torn regions.
“This is a good first step,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said on the Senate floor after the vote.
The bill still faces an uphill battle as senators begin debating amendments with just days left before the two-week recess.
If senators postpone talks for a two-week recess, budget negotiations will take priority and aid measures will be sidelined, given the approaching government shutdown deadlines of March 1 and March 8. There is a high possibility that you will be kicked out.
The $95 billion bill is a stripped-down version of the Senate’s $118 billion bipartisan funding package announced Sunday.
The original, more expensive bill failed in a 49-50 vote Wednesday after days of Republican opposition to border security provisions.
Anticipating that the first vote would fail, Mr. Schumer planned to force a vote on a new $95 billion bill, this time minus the controversial border security element.
“For all the Republicans who started out saying, ‘We want borders,’ and now saying, ‘We want no borders,’ they had both options,” Schumer said Wednesday morning. “It will be,” he said.
The success of Thursday’s vote is a promising next step on an issue that has so far stalled budget negotiations.
Aid to Ukraine was at the center of a particularly dramatic story in September. House Republican hardliners opposed the $6 billion in aid to Ukraine and scrapped the budget deal. At the time, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy agreed to cut funding to Ukraine and pass a short-term bill to keep the government afloat. A few days later, Mr. McCarthy was ousted from his post.
Since then, Congress has kept the government’s lights on with short-term stopgap budget measures called continuing resolutions. These budget measures were passed in haste at several points over the past year to avoid a government shutdown.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) is pushing for the resolution to continue.
“I think the CR administration and government shutdown is a dereliction of duty,” he said in December.
Still, disagreements in a deadlocked parliament forced Mr Johnson to step in.in Januaryhelped pass yet another continuing resolution to avert a government shutdown that currently expires in early March.
There is about a month left until the short-term budget runs out, but passing support for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan could give lawmakers one less point to debate and pave the way for a long-term budget.
But Mr. Johnson’s disdain for continuing the resolution may not be enough to outweigh his desire to water down the Senate’s foreign aid bill. Even if senators were able to pass the $95 billion bill, House Republicans have not confirmed which direction they would move it forward.
“The House of Commons will consider the Senate’s proposal,” Johnson’s office said in a statement Wednesday. “The Speaker believes that the House should consider each issue individually on its merits.”
