Congress has several priority tasks before it can go home for Christmas. There's a reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration and a defense policy bill that has to be passed, and both parties have to start thinking about the two-part deadline to fund the government.
But there is a growing urgency to pass bills giving Israel $14.3 billion in aid and $61 billion in assistance to Ukraine. An additional $7.5 billion would be spent on countering China and securing the Indo-Pacific region, including Taiwan, and $9 billion for humanitarian aid to Israel, Gaza, and Ukraine.
The House has already passed an Israeli military aid bill, but it's likely DOA in the Senate because of a controversial rider added to the bill that would subtract $14.3 billion from the IRS budget.
In the Senate, the Ukraine aid package tied up in a fight over a comprehensive immigration bill that Republicans want to tie to funding for Kyiv. And Democrats in the Senate want to add all sorts of humanitarian conditions to the Israeli aid measure.
“The biggest holdup to the national security assistance package right now is the insistence by our Republican colleagues on partisan border policy as a condition for vital Ukraine aid. This has injected a decades-old, hyper-partisan issue into overwhelmingly bipartisan priorities,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wrote in a letter. “Democrats stand ready to work on common-sense solutions to address immigration, but purely partisan hard-right demands, like those in H.R. 2, jeopardize the entire national security supplemental package.”
Schumer didn't mention that several of his colleagues, most notably Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), aren't going to vote for the Israeli aid package unless it's conditioned on Israel fighting their war against Hamas without killing anyone.
Sanders has floated demands for Israel to end its "indiscriminate bombing" of Gaza, allow aid into the region and take other steps to lay the groundwork for a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
Other progressives are open to the idea. "We've got to have the debate," Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) told Axios, adding, "You can't have that many civilian casualties as part of the Netanyahu war plan."
The other side: More pro-Israel Democratic senators were dismissive of the push to condition aid. "I'm not sure that would come of that now," Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) told Axios. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) told Axios "I don't think you're going to see conditionality" beyond the typical but more narrow legislative practice of specifying the purposes for which aid funding can and cannot be used.
Liberal opposition to the aid is based more on hatred for Netanyahu than any concern for Palestinian civilians. What metrics besides body counts (tabulated by the Hamas mouthpieces in the Gaza Health Ministry) are to be used in order to determine whether Israel's bombing is "indiscriminate"?
As far as Ukraine is concerned, Senate Republicans want to use the aid to Kyiv to leverage concessions from Biden on border security and, especially, reform of asylum law.
Biden “seems to care more about Ukraine’s borders than he cares about America’s borders,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”
“We want to secure our border, we want to stop the flow of illegal immigrants in this country,” Cotton said. “So in return for providing additional funding for Ukraine, we have to have significant and substantial reforms to our border policy, specifically asylum and parole.”
“National security begins here at home, said Republican Minority Leader Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). And if the only way that Joe Biden and the Democrats will face this critical issue is to piggyback aid for Ukraine on border security and immigration reform, then so be it.
There are almost certainly 60 votes for sending tens of billions more to Ukraine, but Republicans have warned they won’t do so without a border deal because they believe Speaker Mike Johnson won’t take up a bill that lacks border security provisions. Schumer’s push for a Senate vote in early December gives the Senate talks a deadline, and it may be needed: Congress has twice passed spending bills this fall that leave out Ukraine aid, and things will only grow tougher in the new year.
“Nothing would make autocrats like Putin or Xi happier right now than to see the United States waver in our support for the Ukrainian people and its military,” Schumer wrote in his letter, referring to the leaders of Russia and China. “This is not just about Ukrainian or Transatlantic security, it’s about American security as well because an unchecked Putin would be an emboldened Putin.”
But Republicans in the House like Freedom Caucus member Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) say he will only consider border security provisions based on a bill the House GOP passed last May. That bill was never taken up by the Senate, and most of the provisions in the bill on asylum are non-starters, even with many Republicans.
If it sounds like a clusterfark, you're absolutely correct. Eventually, they'll get it all sorted out and Israel and Ukraine will get their money. And then Congress will turn once again to the government funding free-for-all.
