Biden vetoes bill on Israel aid package without Ukraine - White House
Photo: Joe Biden, President of the United States (Getty Images)
US President Joe Biden will veto House Republicans' proposed aid package for Israel only, without funding support for Ukraine, according to The Hill.
The White House said that the head of state will not support such an initiative of representatives of the Republican Party to assist Tel Aviv, while simultaneously reducing the funding of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and excluding the allocation of funds to other national security priorities.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has dissected the House Republican proposal and concluded that it brings partisanship in support of Israel and is out of step with the times, ignoring humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza and aid to Ukraine and allies in the Indo-Pacific region.
“This bill is bad for Israel, for the Middle East region, and for our own national security," the Administrative and Budget Office emphasized.
Before that, the White House said the GOP proposal marked a "departure from bipartisan precedent" that calls for funding cuts as part of an emergency package of US national security measures.
“Congress has consistently worked in a bipartisan manner to provide security assistance to Israel, and this bill threatens to unnecessarily undermine that longstanding approach. Bifurcating Israel's security assistance from the other priorities in the national security supplemental will have global consequences,” OMB said.
The administration's statement also said the administration would continue to work with lawmakers in Congress to reach an agreement on an additional request made earlier this month by the White House.
What preceded it
On October 30, the new speaker of the US House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, proposed his version of a $14.3 billion aid package to Israel without Ukraine.
This initiative competes with US President Joe Biden's request to Congress to allocate $106 billion, which, in particular, they want to send to military aid to Ukraine and Israel.
The next day, John Kirby, the White House National Security Council's strategic communications coordinator, said that Biden might veto the bill to help Israel separately from Ukraine if it was passed in Congress.
