Senate majority leader announces vote on Ukraine aid bill
Photo: Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (flickr.com/nnwo)
The U.S. Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer announced that the vote on the agreement on border security and assistance to Ukraine would take place in the upper chamber of Congress next week, reports Politico.
Schumer said that the text of the agreement would be made public as soon as Friday or as late as Sunday.
He plans to schedule a vote on the bill next week, but no later than Wednesday.
"That will give members plenty of time to read the bill before voting on it," Schumer said.
What are the Republicans saying?
The package includes aid to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan, as well as funding for border security and additional money to implement new policies in the bill.
Negotiations over those border policy changes have delayed bill text for months, and key deal negotiators recently said they were waiting on the Senate Appropriations Committee's assessment of what the policy changes would cost.
Leading Republican negotiator Senator James Lankford said on Thursday that "there are people that have requested three days and there are people that have requested three weeks."
What else Politico writes
The article indicates that it is currently unclear whether the Senate leadership will allow amendments to be made to the package, which could significantly delay the final vote.
It is also still unclear whether House Speaker Mike Johnson will put the supplemental to a vote on the House floor if it passes the Senate.
U.S. aid for Ukraine and agreement on Mexican border
In October 2023, U.S. President Joe Biden submitted to Congress a $106 billion bill to help Israel and Ukraine, as well as allies in the Asia-Pacific region. Of this sum, 61.3 billion dollars were proposed to be allocated to Ukraine, and 14.3 billion dollars to Israel.
However, in December, the Senate blocked consideration of this document. The reason was the demands of the Republicans to include in the bill a tougher set of measures to protect the southern border of the U.S. with Mexico.
Recently, the Senate and Congress agreed on the text of the agreement on the U.S. border with Mexico. However, Johnson called the draft agreement "dead on arrival." Thus, he hinted that the document would not be approved by the Republican majority in the lower house of Congress.
