On Tuesday, the Senate will aim for a key vote that will clear the way for final consideration of a $95 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, setting the stage for approval of the bill. and send it to President Biden for his signature.
The measure, which passed the House on Saturday, is expected to attract broad bipartisan support in a test vote scheduled for early afternoon. That would set up a vote on the final paragraph as early as Tuesday night. Mr. Biden called on lawmakers to quickly pass the bill so he could sign it into law.
“To our friends in Ukraine, our allies in NATO, our allies in Israel, and people around the world in need of aid: Rest assured. America will do it again,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said in setting up the vote. He called the House's passage of this bill “a watershed moment for protecting democracy.”
The House on Saturday passed the package in four parts: one measure for each of three US allies and another aimed at sweetening a deal for conservatives that could lead to a ban TikTok nationwide. They sent the bill to the Senate as a single package and only needed an up-or-down vote to pass. Speaker Mike Johnson structured the legislation that way in the House to appeal to different coalitions of support without allowing opposition from any one element to defeat the whole thing.
Elements of law is nearly identical to a bill that passed the Senate with bipartisan support in February. It includes $61 billion for Ukraine; $26 billion for Israel and humanitarian aid to civilians in conflict zones, including Gaza; and 8 billion USD for the Indo-Pacific region. The House added provisions to direct the president to ask the Ukrainian government to repay $10 billion in economic assistance, a concept supported by former President Donald J. Trump, who pushed for all aid to Kyiv are all in the form of a loan. It would also allow the president to forgive those loans starting in 2026.
Some hard-line Republicans who oppose continuing to send aid to Ukraine are expected to oppose the legislation, as are some liberal Democrats who have said they sending more offensive weapons to Israel at a time when the government's campaign has killed dozens of people cannot be approved. of thousands of people in Gaza and created a famine crisis.
But the vast majority of senators are expected to support the legislation, and Senate leaders see the bill's impending passage as a special victory, in the face of longstanding opposition Months of talk about aid to Ukraine has built up in the House of Commons.
For months, Mr. Johnson and right-wing Republicans in the House of Representatives have refused to consider aid to Ukraine unless Mr. Biden agreed to a series of strict measures to limit immigration on the US border with Mexico. . When Senate Democrats agreed earlier this year law combining aid with tougher border enforcement provisions, Mr. Trump denounced it and Republicans rejected it.
The Senate then passed $95 billion in emergency aid legislation to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan without any immigration measures, increasing political pressure on the House to do the same . The message to Mr. Johnson from Mr. Schumer and Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and minority leader, was the same: Pass the Senate bill.
