[Text/Observer.com, Li Zexi]
On the 13th local time, the U.S. Senate passed a bill worth $95 billion with 70 votes in favor and 29 votes against, mainly for aid to Ukraine and Israel. U.S. President Joe Biden, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and others have called on the U.S. House of Representatives to pass the bill as soon as possible, but the New York Times reported that in the face of opposition from right-wing Republicans, the bill will face more severe obstacles in the House of Representatives.
The bill includes $60.1 billion in aid to Ukraine, which means that the United States will increase its aid to Ukraine to $170 billion since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In addition, the bill includes $14.1 billion in aid to Israel and nearly $10 billion in humanitarian assistance in conflict zones. Nearly all Democratic senators voted for the bill, as did 22 Republican senators, including most of the Republican leadership in the Senate, while 26 Republican senators voted against.
U.S. President Joe Biden called the bill vital to U.S. national security interests and called on the House of Representatives to pass it as soon as possible, because "every day we don't act, the greater the loss." The New York Times previously reported that the United States' delay in passing a bill to further aid Ukraine has had a substantial impact on the war situation. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed gratitude to "all U.S. senators who have made morally strong choices" and expects the House of Representatives to make the same choice to defend "our common security." Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (Mitch McConnell) called on Republican House Speaker Johnson to put the bill in the House of Representatives for debate and voting as soon as possible on the 13th.
Zelensky met with McConnell and other senators in December 2023 (Source: "Politico.com")
However, before the bill was officially passed, Johnson issued a statement on the 12th, saying that "any so-called national security supplementary bill must first protect our own borders", given that the latest bill in the Senate does not have provisions on the U.S.-Mexico border, "the House of Representatives has to advance border and national security in its own way."
Previously, the Senate voted down a bill on border security and foreign military assistance due to Republican opposition. The $118 billion bill, which ties U.S. foreign aid to measures to address domestic border issues, has sparked divisions between the two parties. The bill subsequently deleted the reference to "border migration policy reform" and retained only the reference to military aid.
Johnson's statement was criticized by some Democrats, who pointed out that the Senate leadership of both parties had responded to Johnson's call to reach a compromise bill on immigration + aid, but Johnson opposed the final outcome between the two sides, resulting in the compromise bill seems to be dead. Now, Johnson has criticized the latest aid bill for not having provisions on the U.S. border, and Democrats say that if Johnson really cares about the U.S.-Mexico border, he should support the previous compromise bill. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on the 13th that Johnson's change in position was "incomprehensible" and said that "we should not play political games on national security issues."
"Punchbowl News" and other U.S. media noticed that Johnson's statement on the 12th was not as tough as his previous statement against the "immigration + aid" bill, and believed that there may be some room for compromise.
However, according to the New York Times, several right-wing Republican lawmakers have threatened to vote to remove Johnson if he allows the bill to pass. When Johnson became Speaker of the House in November, some House members who had supported the removal of former Speaker McCarthy said at the time that they were willing to give Johnson a certain degree of "patience and flexibility" because "the current mess is not his fault", but signs in recent days seem to indicate that many Republican House members are losing patience with Johnson. Right-wing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a high-profile supporter of McCarthy's ascension, publicly threatened Johnson in January that she would vote to remove him if he supported "a border bill that excludes conservative policies."
The most influential figure in the Republican Party at the moment is clearly Trump. Analysts and some Republicans say the failure of the "immigration + aid" compromise bill is inseparable from Trump's staunch opposition, which they believe is because he does not want the mess on the U.S.-Mexico border to be resolved before the election to help his own election, and Trump himself has expressed his willingness to take responsibility for the bill's failure. On the 10th, he posted on his social media platform "Truth Social" that "we can no longer send money without reciprocation or 'strings attached', and the United States should no longer be the culprit."
In 2019, Zelensky met with Trump during his visit to the United States (Source: Associated Press)
Some Republican senators who support aid to Ukraine held a dialogue with Trump on the 13th, discussing the possibility of obtaining aid funds through other means, including using Russia's frozen assets and Ukrainian resources, and how to implement his ideas on "getting returns" and "adding strings attached", but they did not say that the dialogue has achieved any substantive results.
In addition to Trump, this bill has also met with strong opposition from Musk, the owner of social media "X" (formerly Twitter), who met with Republican Senator J. J. Musk on the 12th. D. Vance, Ron Johnson, and former Republican presidential primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, among others, held an open online conversation to lash out at the bill for continuing to spend money on foreigners despite America's high debt status.
J· D. Vance said that after the bill is passed, if Trump is elected in November and stops aid to Ukraine, the Democrats may say that Trump is violating U.S. law, "similar to the first impeachment he faced, impeaching him again, this bill is an 'impeachment trap'." In this conversation, Musk said that Russia "cannot afford to lose the war" and therefore any assistance is meaningless. Ron Johnson said that because Putin believes that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is a war related to the survival of the Russian state, it means that it is impossible for Russia to surrender and Ukraine to win.
Not all Republicans, however, take that position. Many Republican politicians with more seniority or ties to the military emphasized the Republican Party's traditional "pro-defense" stance, saying that "to protect Ukraine is to protect the United States." During the debate on the 12th, Republican Senator Thom Tillis called on Americans to "work harder" and that "Russia's life is in danger."
McConnell said on the 13th that there has always been an isolationist force in the Republican Party in the past, "especially when the president is a Democrat", for example, during World War II, the Republican Party once opposed President Roosevelt's support for Allied countries such as the United Kingdom, so the current differences in the party are not surprising, but saying that "history will give a conclusion" is more correct than the isolationist position of Trump and others.
The US media believes that in the face of large intra-party opposition, it may be difficult for Speaker Johnson to formally introduce the bill for debate, which means that the bill may not even reach the voting stage.
The New York Times reported on the 13th that Democrats and Republicans who support the bill may be able to jointly sign the application, and as long as more than half of them sign, they can bypass the speaker of the House of Representatives in terms of procedure and directly start debating and then voting. However, this will take at least a month on the one hand, and on the other hand, it will need the support of several Republican House members, and any Republican House member who supports with the Democrats to bypass the Speaker of the House of Representatives may be seen as a traitor and subject to unprecedented political pressure within the party. Matt Glassman, a researcher at the Institute for Government Affairs, tweeted that signing the petition by Republican House members would be tantamount to undermining the agenda of the party leadership, and that it would take a lot of determination or an extremely important issue to get to this point, and he wasn't sure if Ukraine was so important in the minds of those lawmakers.
U.S. House Speaker Johnson (left)
However, even Republicans who oppose the bill admit that if it does go to the vote, the bill will pass with a high probability. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said on the 13th that the Democratic Party will use "all legislative tools" to ensure that the bill is passed, which is considered to be the process of signing the application.
Most of the attention is currently focused on the bill's provisions on Ukraine, but the $10 billion aid to Israel has also attracted the attention of some leftists. Senator Bernie Sanders, a progressive faction, criticized the bill as "a blank check for Israel" and said, "We're completely wrong about what should be a priority." The Americans, seeing that we spend nearly $1 trillion a year on the military, made appropriations almost without any debate. We can give almost unlimited money to buy bombs and tanks, but we don't have the money to provide health care for everyone." He also voted against the bill. Some other progressive politicians have raised similar objections.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not yet said anything about the bill.