U.S. aid to Israel is at a standstill in the U.S. Congress as lawmakers are running out of time to agree on billions of dollars in security priorities before a short-term government funding bill expires on November 17.
While Democrats and Republicans are broadly in agreement about assisting Israel in the month-old conflict with Hamas, both parties have attached conditions that have prevented the aid from moving forward.
The Democratic-majority Senate will not take up the $13.6 billion bill providing funding for Israel’s air and missile defense systems passed by the Republican-majority House of Representatives last week by a vote of 226-196.
Democrats objected to Republicans paying for the aid to Israel by making in-kind cuts to the budget of the Internal Revenue Service, the agency responsible for taxation.
The House-passed legislation was the first major U.S. legislative response to the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel under the leadership of new House Speaker Mike Johnson.
“It's an urgent necessity,” Johnson told reporters on Tuesday. “Some of our Senate colleagues took issue with the pay-for that we put in there, but I made the point that we can take care of our allies and obligations and get our own fiscal house in order. Don't forget, we have a $33.6 trillion federal debt.”
Most House Democrats support sending aid to Israel but voted against the bill because of the IRS budget cuts.
“Instead of passing life-saving aid to Israel that had an overwhelming majority of support within the Congress, Johnson and the MAGA [Make American Great Again], Republicans — for the first time in Israel’s history — said that aid would only be available if we agreed to their demands to pass public policy changes that make it easier for billionaires to cheat on their taxes,” House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar told reporters Tuesday.
Senate Democrats have also called for aid to Israel to be passed as part of the White House’s broader $106 billion emergency supplemental request, which includes a new round of aid for Ukraine’s defense against Russia, funding to combat Chinese aggression in the Asia-Pacific region and more money to secure U.S. borders.
“If Republicans inject partisanship into otherwise bipartisan priorities, that is only going to make it harder to avoid a shutdown, pass Israel aid, pass Ukraine aid, pass humanitarian aid for Gaza, and all of our other priorities,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor Tuesday.
Republican support for additional aid to Ukraine has waned over recent months, prompting Democrats to argue the security priorities cannot be separated at a crucial time in the war.
“We are making a decision as we speak in the next several weeks about whether Kyiv will be this time next year a Ukrainian city or a Russian city. That is how serious the decision we are making is about our support for Ukraine,” Democratic Senator Chris Murphy told reporters Tuesday.
A group of Republican senators released a stand-alone border security proposal that could serve as a negotiating point with Democrats to compromise on aid for Ukraine. The proposal provides asylum and parole reform while resuming construction of the wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“President Biden’s immigration policies have put American workers last and exposed our communities to crime and terrorism. This border package will cut off the flow of illegal migration, prioritize legitimate claims to entry, and restore order,” Republican Senator Tom Cotton said in a statement.
Schumer said Tuesday that “making Ukraine funding conditional on the hard-right border policies that can’t ever pass Congress is a huge mistake by our Republican colleagues.”
The White House said its request for $60 billion in aid to Ukraine to combat Russian aggression could not be separated from aid to Israel or its own request for $14 billion in border security funding.
“The idea of an urgent supplemental is you're submitting what you think are urgent requests, and the president wants to see all of them honored, all of them acted on, all of them together. We wouldn't have submitted it that way if we didn't believe that they all weren't important,” John Kirby, White House national security spokesperson, told reporters last week.
