The Senate has blocked a supplemental funding bill that included financial aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan as well as provisions aimed at bolstering border security. The vote, which fell mostly along party lines, increases the likelihood that Congress will fail to approve more funding for Ukraine before the end of the year, as the White House has warned that Kyiv is desperately in need of more aid.
The vote was 49 to 51, as every Senate Republican opposed advancing the legislation. Sixty votes were needed to take up the bill. Republicans in both chambers of Congress had demanded stricter border regulations in exchange for their support, and they said the bill failed to meet their requirements.
The vote came one day after Senate Democrats formally unveiled the $111bn supplemental security bill, reflecting the funding request that Joe Biden issued in October to provide assistance to the US’s allies abroad.
Ahead of the vote, Biden delivered an address to urge Congress to pass the bill, warning that a failure to act would only benefit Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, in the war against Ukraine.
“Who is prepared to walk away from holding Putin accountable for this behavior? Who among us is really prepared to do that?” Biden said. “I’m not prepared to walk away, and I don’t think the American people are either.”
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, addressed leaders of the G7 group of nations and called on them to confound Vladimir Putin by winning “the battle of motivations” and not showing weakness.
The G7 leaders met by video at short notice in a show of solidarity with the Ukrainian leader that included trying to breathe new life into the sanctions against Russia.
Zelenskiy thanked G7 leaders for their support, and warned that Moscow was counting on a collapse of western support for Ukraine. “Russia believes America and Europe will show weakness and will not maintain support for Ukraine at the proper level. Putin believes the free world will not fully enforce its own sanctions and the Russian elite mocks the world’s doubts about using Russian assets to compensate for damage from Russian aggression,” he said.
“All these are part of a much broader issue – what can freedom do and what can dictatorships do. We must answer these questions together.”
Those arguments failed to sway Senate Republicans on Wednesday. Although the supplemental funding bill included a number of border security measures, Republicans in both chambers have insisted the legislation must go further in restricting migrants’ asylum and parole applications. Those proposals are a non-starter for many Democrats, making it unclear how a supplemental bill can pass the divided Congress.
Biden said on Wednesday that he was willing to make “significant compromises on the border”, but he accused Republicans of taking an all-or-nothing approach to the immigration talks.
“This has to be a negotiation,” Biden said. “Republicans think they can get everything they want without any bipartisan compromise. That’s not the answer.”
Those tensions spilled over on Tuesday night, when a classified Senate briefing on Ukraine erupted into a shouting match. Zelenskiy was scheduled to speak at the briefing, but he was forced to cancel due to a “last-minute” issue, according to the Democratic Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer.
The briefing still occurred despite Zelenskiy’s absence, but Schumer then accused Republicans of having “hijacked” the meeting to discuss border security. Republicans then criticized Schumer for refusing to address the crucial issues that created the current standoff.
“Republicans are just walking out of the briefing because the people there are not willing to actually discuss what it takes to get a deal done,” Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican of Utah, said.
With no resolution in sight, Senate Republicans successfully blocked the supplemental security bill from advancing.
Even as Republicans have raised serious concerns about the border provisions of the bill, the $10bn allocated for aid to Israel has sparked criticism from Bernie Sanders . In a letter sent to his colleagues on Tuesday, the progressive Vermont senator warned against providing a “blank check” to Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, as the death toll in Gaza continues to climb.
“No, I do not think we should be appropriating $10.1bn for the right-wing, extremist Netanyahu government to continue its current military strategy,” Sanders wrote. “What the Netanyahu government is doing is immoral, it is in violation of international law, and the United States should not be complicit in those actions.”
After it became clear that the bill would fail to advance on Wednesday, Sanders joined Republicans in opposing the procedural motion. Schumer initially voted to advance the bill, but he then switched his vote to “no”, a procedural maneuver that will allow him to take up the legislation again at a later date.