It’s been 45 days since President Joe Biden implored Congress to approve emergency funding to provide aid to Ukraine and Israel, American allies who are at war with Russia and Hamas, respectively. In that month and a half, there’s been almost no action on Capitol Hill, as what would normally be a layup of a bill has been stonewalled thanks to Republican obstinance.
Providing help to the two countries is a top priority for the White House, which warns that money for Ukraine is set to run out shortly. But Senate Democrats rightly decided that an attempted bipartisan effort to shake loose that $100 billion national security package came at much too high a price.
Senate Democrats rightly decided that an attempted bipartisan effort to shake loose that $100 billion national security package came at much too high a price.
The largest hurdle to Biden’s proposed aid package has been the GOP’s insistence on linking that aid passing to other conservative pet projects, including defunding the IRS. House Republicans, in particular, have soured on Ukraine aid overall and have demanded that any new funding for that country come with a draconian immigration bill attached to it. While not endorsing the House bill fully, a group of Senate Republicans has declared that changes to how the U.S. processes asylum-seekers at the southern border is its condition for approving Biden’s aid package. Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who is generally in favor of the foreign aid package, said in October that “Democrats will have to accept a really serious U.S.-Mexico border protection bill in order to get our people on board.”
To that end, a bipartisan group of five senators had been trying to craft some kind of compromise. On a Friday early last month, CBS News reported that the group — which includes Democratic Sens. Michael Bennet of Colorado and Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Republicans James Lankford of Oklahoma and Thom Tillis of North Carolina and…
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