Feb 13, 2024 - 17:37
By npr.org

Senate advances military aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan

A bipartisan majority in the U.S. Senate voted 70-to-29 to advance a $95 billion foreign aid package, despite warnings from House Republicans that the bill may never receive a vote.

The package contains no changes to U.S. border policy, despite early insistence by Republicans that they would not support foreign aid provisions — which provide military support for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan — without substantial changes to the Biden administration's border policies.

But after months of bipartisan negotiation produced a border-plus-foreign-aid deal unveiled earlier this month, the plan withered in a matter of days. Many Republican senators announced their opposition to the 300-plus-page bill within hours of its release. Some stated explicitly that they hoped to preserve the border crisis as an issue for the 2024 campaign season and echoed concerns about the deal raised by GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump.

Now House Republicans, who rejected the previous bipartisan deal for failing to meet hard-line demands on border provisions, say they will also reject the stand-alone security funding.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., released a statement Monday night well before the final vote was scheduled in the Senate.

"The mandate of national security supplemental legislation was to secure America's own border before sending additional foreign aid around the world," Johnson wrote. "It is what the American people demand and deserve. 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. America deserves better than the Senate's status quo."