{"id":42346,"date":"2024-04-24T07:10:33","date_gmt":"2024-04-24T07:10:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=42346"},"modified":"2026-07-10T02:43:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T02:43:17","slug":"us-senate-passes-95bn-in-aid-for-ukraine-israel-and-taiwan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2024\/04\/24\/us-senate-passes-95bn-in-aid-for-ukraine-israel-and-taiwan\/","title":{"rendered":"US Senate passes $95bn in aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The\u00a0US Senate\u00a0voted resoundingly on Tuesday to approve $95bn in aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, as a bipartisan super-majority united to send the long-stalled package to Joe Biden\u2019s desk for signature. The final vote was 79 to 18.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bill easily cleared a key procedural hurdle earlier in the day. The Senate overwhelmingly voted to advance the measure in a step hailed by the majority leader as \u201cone of the greatest achievements the Senate has faced in years\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cToday the Senate sends a unified message to the entire world: America will always defend democracy in its hour of need,\u201d said Chuck Schumer in a floor speech on Tuesday afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMake no mistake, America will deliver on its promise to act like a leader on the world stage, to hold the line against autocratic thugs like Vladimir Putin,\u201d he continued. \u201cWe are showing Putin that betting against America is always, always a grave mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Chuck
Chuck Schumer hails bipartisanship as foreign aid bill heads for passage \u2013 video<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After months of delays and setbacks, the House\u00a0last week approved\u00a0four bills to rush funding to three American allies while approving a conservative proposal that could lead to a nationwide ban of the social media platform TikTok. The measures were combined into one large package that the Senate approved on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The <\/a>legislation <\/a>includes\u00a0$60.8bn to replenish Ukraine\u2019s war chest as it seeks to repel Russia from its territory; $26.3bn for Israel and humanitarian relief for civilians in conflict zones, including Gaza; and $8.1bn for the Indo-Pacific region to bolster its defenses against China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reacting to the funding for\u00a0Taiwan, China said it urged the US to fulfil its commitment to not support \u201cTaiwan independence\u201d with concrete actions, and stop arming it in any way, a spokesperson for its Taiwan Affairs Office said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taiwan\u2019s military said on Sunday it intended to discuss with the US how to use the money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Israel\u2019s foreign minister,\u00a0Israel\u00a0Katz, also reacted to its portion of the funding, saying it sent a \u201cstrong message\u201d to the country\u2019s enemies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a call on Monday, Biden informed the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, that he would \u201cmove quickly\u201d to send desperately needed military aid,\u00a0including air defense weaponry, to the country after the bill\u2019s passage by the Senate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a move to bolster Republican support, the GOP-controlled House added a provision that would see\u00a0TikTok blocked in the US\u00a0unless its Chinese-owned parent company divests from the social media platform within a year. Much of the foreign aid section of the bill mirrors what the Senate passed in February, with the addition of a measure mandating the president seek repayment from Kyiv for roughly $10bn in economic assistance in the form of \u201cforgivable loans\u201d, an idea first floated by Donald Trump, who was initially opposed to aiding Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the foreign aid package largely resembles the measure passed by the Senate in February, several Republican senators who voted against it then reversed course and on Tuesday gave their approval.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among them was Lindsey Graham, a longtime defense hawk who\u00a0previously opposed the Senate\u2019s foreign aid package\u00a0because it wasn\u2019t paired with border legislation but on Tuesday voted to advance it. After a visit to Ukraine earlier this year, Graham endorsed Trump\u2019s loan plan and\u00a0has since pointed to Iran\u2019s aerial attack on Israel\u00a0as a reason send aid to the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIsrael needs the US Senate now. No excuses,\u201d Graham wrote on X before voting to advance the bill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Senate\u2019s passage of the aid package caps a tortured odyssey on Capitol Hill that began last year with a request for the White House for a fresh round of funding for\u00a0Ukraine\u00a0and for Israel, reeling from the 7 October cross-border attack by Hamas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite broad congressional support, the effort almost immediately stalled as a faction of Republicans, increasingly skeptical of US involvement in foreign entanglements, resisted sending more aid to Ukraine. Conservatives began insisting that any funding to foreign countries be paired with legislation aimed at stemming the rise of people arriving at the US-Mexico border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When a\u00a0bipartisan border and national security billnegotiated in the Senate collapsed, Schumer proceeded to move forward with a vote on the foreign aid bill up for a vote.\u00a0It passed overwhelmingly in a 70-29 vote in February, but had no clear path forward in the Republican-controlled House, where the new speaker, Mike Johnson,\u00a0dithered\u00a0as Ukraine suffered battlefield losses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Personal entreaties from Biden, congressional leaders and European heads of state, participation in high-level intelligence briefings as House speaker, and prayer eventually persuaded Johnson to act. The decision may come at a political cost: his job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHistory judges us for what we do,\u201d Johnson said at an emotional press conference last week, after a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers passed the aid package by lopsided margins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In remarks on Tuesday, Schumer praised Johnson, who he said \u201crose to the occasion\u201d, as well as Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader with whom the Democrat said he had worked \u201chand in hand and shoulder to shoulder to get this bill done\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of people inside and outside the Congress wanted this package to fail,\u201d Schumer said. \u201cBut today those in Congress who stand on the side of democracy are winning the day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McConnell has made funding Ukraine\u2019s war effort a legacy-building quest,\u00a0after announcing his decision to step down\u00a0as the long-serving Senate Republican leader. In a lengthy floor speech on Tuesday, McConnell confronted the strain of \u201cAmerica first\u201d isolationism favored by Trump and his loyalists in Congress that is rife and growing within the Republican party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cToday\u2019s action is overdue, but our work does not end here,\u201d he said. \u201cTrust in American resolve is not rebuilt overnight. Expanding and restocking the arsenal of democracy doesn\u2019t just happen by magic.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0US Senate\u00a0voted resoundingly on Tuesday to approve $95bn in aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, as a bipartisan super-majority united to send the long-stalled package to Joe Biden\u2019s desk for signature. The final vote was 79 to 18. The bill easily cleared a key procedural hurdle earlier in the day. The Senate overwhelmingly voted to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":42347,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[6850,8775,285,5304,8348,5178,11941,7099,9204,9649,3189,7421,6848,10767,6693,10000,2512,11356,11606,5799,9505,9127,6428,5345,2629,8478,5930,10769,8601,8316,3095,2471,7519,5342,3874,7225,6565,5721,11743,11031,1510,10795,5572,6779,10500,5612,7693,12727,96,8386,3805,71,6944,6575,3457,5655,8501,5349,9277,10041,8840,2711,7592,5180,5555,9262,6348,11565,8033,694,6886,5251,6571,2982,10415,36,594,10353,6874],"class_list":["post-42346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-aid","tag-air-defense","tag-arsenal","tag-attack","tag-ban","tag-biden","tag-bill","tag-bipartisan","tag-border","tag-capitol","tag-capitol-hill","tag-chinese","tag-civilians","tag-conflict","tag-congress","tag-conservative","tag-conservatives","tag-delays","tag-democracy","tag-democrat","tag-european","tag-february","tag-foreign-aid","tag-foreign-minister","tag-gaza","tag-gop","tag-hamas","tag-house-speaker","tag-independence","tag-indo-pacific","tag-israel","tag-joe-biden","tag-judges","tag-kyiv","tag-lead","tag-loan","tag-loans","tag-losses","tag-majority","tag-majority-leader","tag-mexico","tag-mike-johnson","tag-military","tag-military-aid","tag-mitch-mcconnell","tag-money","tag-national-security","tag-package","tag-china","tag-platform","tag-president","tag-putin","tag-republican","tag-republicans","tag-russia","tag-security","tag-senate","tag-social-media","tag-speaker","tag-speech","tag-strong","tag-taiwan","tag-tiktok","tag-ukraine","tag-ukrainian","tag-united-states","tag-us","tag-us-mexico-border","tag-video","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-volodymyr-zelenskiy","tag-war","tag-white","tag-white-house","tag-work","tag-world","tag-who","tag-x","tag-zelenskiy"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42346"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42348,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42346\/revisions\/42348"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}