The Biden administration is expected to send the Senate an emergency supplemental funding request for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan by the end of the week, Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Thursday.
‘When the Senate receives this request, we spring into action and move it as soon as we can,’ Schumer said on the floor Thursday morning.
Schumer said the upper chamber would pass a bipartisan resolution to affirm that the chamber stands in support of Israel. The resolution was cosponsored by 99 Democrat and Republican lawmakers.
‘Our resolution has overwhelming, nearly unanimous support in the Senate on both sides, and we’re working with the few who have some problems to solve their problems so we can get this done,’ Schumer said. ‘And by the end of the week, the president will send the Senate a supplemental request to provide Israel the military intelligence, diplomatic and humanitarian aid it needs.’
According to sources familiar with the talks, Republican lawmakers in the upper chamber are negotiating which border security provisions they should ask the White House to include in the package.
In a call last week, the White House floated adding border security in the emergency package, but some Republican lawmakers are skeptical it will include what they want — much stricter border policies to quell the influx of migrants at the border.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday during the first Senate GOP press conference since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 that the White House will need to draft a ‘broad’ spending bill for aid to Israel that includes ‘credible’ solutions to the border crisis.
‘There’s a connection between all of this, and I am not surprised, frankly, that the administration seems to be inclined to send up a broad package,’ McConnell said after telling reporters that the attack on Israel is ‘interconnected’ with other attacks by North Korea, Iran, Russia and China on democratic nations.
‘As my colleagues have pointed out, the border part of it needs to be credible,’ the GOP leader said. ‘Not just some reference to it, but credible dealing with the problem.’
According to a GOP aide, there is more bipartisan support for aid to Israel in both chambers compared to those who are supportive of sending more aid to the Eastern European nation. Ukraine has already received upward of $100 billion from the federal government to aid in its defense against the Russian invasion that began in February 2022.
‘People are going to grumble, but they’re going to vote for it,’ a source familiar with the negotiations said.
The administration will be considering upward of $100 billion for the supplemental request, according to lawmakers. In August, President Biden requested that Congress allocate $24 billion for aid to Ukraine. By Sept. 30, Congress passed a temporary spending patch for most government programs – set to expire Nov. 17 – without any additional aid to Ukraine.
Fox News reported this week that Customs and Border Protection has encountered thousands of ‘special interest aliens’ since 2021. Special interest aliens are people from countries identified by the U.S. government as having conditions that promote or protect terrorism or potentially pose some sort of national security threat to the U.S.
Biden is expected to address the nation in a foreign policy speech at 8 p.m. ET on Thursday night.
Fox News’ Bill Melugin contributed to this report.