A bipartisan group of House lawmakers have unveiled their $66.3 billion supplemental proposal, which includes defense aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan and border security provisions.
The House moderates’ proposal is being offered as an alternative to the Senate’s $95.3 billion foreign aid bill passed last week that doesn’t include border items, while it remains unclear whether their measure will gain broad support across the lower chamber.
“Securing one’s borders is necessary to preserving one’s democracy and, therefore, necessary to maintaining world order and world peace,” Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), a lead sponsor of the proposal, said in a statement. “As the world’s oldest and strongest democracy, the United States’ primary responsibility must be to secure its own borders. But we also have an obligation to assist our allies in securing their borders, especially when they come under assault by dictators, terrorists, and totalitarians. Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan are all freedom-loving democracies, they are our allies, and we must assist them in protecting their borders just as we must protect our own. We can, and must, achieve all of the above.
Along with Fitzpatrick, Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine), Don Bacon (R-Neb.), Ed Case (D-Hawaii), Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.), Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.) and Jim Costa (D-Calif.) have sponsored the new supplemental proposal.
The House moderates’ proposal includes defense-only funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, cutting out the humanitarian and economic aid from the Senate’s bill, while the security aid funding levels roughly match what’s in the upper chamber’s supplemental package.
Specifically, the House lawmakers’ legislation covers $47.7 billion for Ukraine, to include $13.8 billion for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative to purchase U.S.-made weapons for Kyiv, $10.4 billion for Israel, which includes $4 billion for procurement of Iron Dome air defense system and David’s Sling short-range ballistic missile defense capabilities and $1.2 billion for Israel’s Iron Beam laser-based defense system.
The bill also includes $2.4 billion to support operations in U.S. Central Command and “combat expenditures related to recent conflict in the Red Sea” as well as $542 million for “U.S. Indo-Pacific Command to address critical, unfunded operations”
For the border security items in the bill, which the lawmakers note would be one-year provisions, the lawmakers note it “would require the suspension of entry of inadmissible aliens to achieve operational control over U.S. borders, require immigration officers to detain and immediately expel inadmissible aliens.”
“Congress must secure our border. This bill would provide expulsion authority, a tool Border Patrol needs to reassert control and do their jobs. Restoring the Remain in Mexico policy would address SCOTUS’s ruling that this authority is discretionary,” Golden said in a statement. “The situation in Ukraine is also deadly serious. Russia has tried to influence our elections and has run disinformation campaigns to divide our nation. At this moment, the enemy of our enemy is our friend.”
The Senate passed its $95.3 billion bill with aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan early Tuesday morning following months of bipartisan negotiations over border security items that were ultimately removed from consideration (Defense Daily, Feb. 13).
Tuesday’s vote followed a failed effort last week in the Senate to move forward on a negotiated border bill to accompany the foreign aid legislation, which drew opposition from some Republicans for not going far enough in restricting immigration measures and after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) declared the bill “dead on arrival” if it was sent to the House (Defense Daily, Feb. 7).
Ahead of the Senate’s vote on its foreign aid bill, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) reiterated his opposition to the legislation and its lack of border security provisions, signaling he’s unlikely to bring it to the House floor for consideration.
“Instead, the Senate’s foreign aid bill is silent on the most pressing issue facing the country,” Johnson said. “The mandate of national security supplemental legislation was to secure America’s own border before sending additional foreign aid around the world. It is what the American people demand and deserve. Now, in the absence of having received a single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters. America deserves better than the Senate’s status quo.”