The Associated Press is out with a frankly gigantically helpful, detailed breakdown of what’s in the national security bill that the US Senate passed this morning but which Republicans who control the US House do not like one bit.
Highlights follow:
UKRAINE: About $60 billion would go to supporting Ukraine [with] nearly $14bn to rearm itself through the purchase of weapons and munitions and nearly $15bn for support services such as military training and intelligence sharing. About $8bn would go to help Ukraine’s government continue basic operations with a prohibition on money going toward pensions. And there’s about $1.6bn to help Ukraine’s private sector. About a third of the money allocated to supporting Ukraine actually will be spent replenishing the US military with the weapons and equipment that are going to Kyiv. There’s also about $480m to help Ukrainians displaced by the war.
ISRAEL: About $14.1bn would go to support Israel and US military operations in the region. About $4bn would go to boost Israel’s air defenses, with another $1.2bn for Iron Beam, a laser weapons system designed to intercept and destroy missiles. There’s also about $2.5bn to support US military operations in the region. The legislation contains also $9.2bn in humanitarian assistance to provide food, water, shelter and medical care to civilians in Gaza and the West Bank, Ukraine and others in war zones around the world.
CHINA: More than $8bn in the bill would go to support key partners in the Indo-Pacific and deter aggression by the Chinese government. The bill includes about $1.9bn to replenish US weapons provided to Taiwan and about $3.3bn to build more US-made submarines in support of a security partnership with Australia and the United Kingdom.
OTHER PROVISIONS: The bill includes about $400m for a grant program that helps nonprofits and places of worship make security enhancements and protect them from hate crimes. There’s also language that would target sanctions on criminal organizations involved in the production of fentanyl.
Thanks, AP.
Andrew Bates, the White House deputy press secretary, is being predictably scathing about Mike Johnson’s opposition to the national security package passed by the Senate this morning, noting “brutal juxtapositions” for the House speaker in “every article” published on the situation in Congress.
Quoting reporting by Axios, Bates highlights how “Johnson criticised the lack of border security provisions in the bill [after] Senate Republicans largely rejected a package that included border security provisions … due in no small part to Johnson”.
Here, meanwhile, is Bill Kristol, the conservative Never Trumper behind the Bulwark website:
Very good news from the United States Senate (not a sentence I’m used to writing these days!): The Ukraine/Israel/Taiwan national security bill passes, 70-29. Democrats 48-3. Republicans 22-26. So one and a half responsible parties in Senate.
FWIW, I’m bullish on the House.
TBF, not many people are. Some observers suggest Democrats in the House might be able to use a discharge petition to force the aid package through despite opposition from Speaker Johnson and the far right of his party.
Here’s how Indivisible, a progressive activism group, defines a discharge petition:
After a bill has been introduced and referred to a standing committee for 30 days, a member of the House can file a motion to have the bill discharged, or released, from consideration by the committee. In order to do this, a majority of the House (218 voting members, not delegates) must sign the petition. Once a discharge petition reaches 218 members, after several legislative days, the House considers the motion to discharge the legislation and takes a vote after 20 minutes of debate. If the vote passes (by all those who signed the petition in the first place), then the House will take up the measure.
Republicans currently control the House 219-212, with four vacancies.
Here’s what Indivisble says about why discharge petitions usually don’t work – but which gives a hint, bolded, as to why some people hope such a move might actually work this time, given how closely the chamber is divided and how not all Republicans are opposed to aiding Ukraine:
Rarely are discharge petitions successfully used to force a vote on a contentious bill. This is due to the fact that discharge petitions are typically used by the minority party on issues that can garner bipartisan support. The most likely way for a discharge petition to be used in this Congress is for Democrats to try to force a vote on something that all Democrats and just a handful of Republicans wanted to force to the floor. But the only way for this to happen is if there’s enormous pressure on that handful of Republicans to break ranks from their party’s leadership.
The national security bill that passed the US Senate early this morning, by 70 votes to 29, is valued at $95bn. The House speaker, Mike Johnson, has already rejected it. Nonetheless, here’s some of what’s in it:
$60bn in aid for Ukraine, in its fight against the Russian invasion.
$14bn for Israel, as it prosecutes its war against Hamas.
$5bn (or close to) for allies in the Indo-Pacific prominently including Taiwan, which is widely held to be in danger of attack from China.
According to Punchbowl News, a very decent source for reporting on machinations in the halls of Congress, “many Republicans support axing nearly $8bn in Ukrainian economic support from the bill while maintaining lethal aid”, a move that was attempted but deflected in the Senate.
Other House Republicans are outright opposed to continuing support for Ukraine. Most House Republicans are cross (in a sort of performance-art way) that the national security package passed without attendant measures on border security and immigration. An agreement on that, of course, was tanked by Senate Republicans after Donald Trump (essentially) told them to do so.
Here’s what Republicans could have won, as summarised by Patty Murray, the Washington state Democrat who chairs the Senate appropriations committee, when the national security package was announced earlier this month, as a $118.3bn deal including border measures.
Good morning, and welcome to another day in US politics. Like most recent days in Washington and out on the campaign trail, this one promises to be filled with fun. (Depending on your definition of “fun”, natch.) To wit:
Early this morning, after various rightwing, pro-Trump senators mounted an old-fashioned all-night talkathon, the Senate passeda $95bn aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. The problem is that it now has to pass the House, where the pro-Trump Republican right is very unlikely to leave it unscathed. The House speaker, Mike “Moses” Johnson (that’s not really his middle name or even his nickname, but see here), issued the following statement: “In the absence of having received any 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.” Of that status quo: pro-Trump Republicans in the Senate, you’ll remember, last week tanked their own border and immigration deal, reached after months of negotiations with Democrats, at their master’s behest.
Next: today could be the day that the House makes Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, the first cabinet official to be impeached since William Belknap, Ulysses S Grant’s really rather corrupt secretary of war, in 1876. Of course, success in said vote will require basic procedural competence from Johnson and the rest of Republican House leadership – last week, on their first try, they lost. The weather – a big storm on the US east coast – and other imponderables could yet affect the second attempt to impeach Mayorkas, which is expected tonight. If Republicans manage to get it done, an impeachment on purely political grounds will be deader than dead in the Senate, where Democrats are hardly likely to allow a trial in a presidential election year.
Outside Washington, today’s the day for a special election on Long Island in New York, where the Republican Mazi Pilip and the Democrat Tom Suozzi (a former occupant of the seat) are competing to replace George Santos, the indicted fabulist who became only the sixth member of the US House ever to be expelled. Predictions are for very low turnout – maybe even lower than low, given that storm expected to dump a lot of snow on New York – and a razor-thin margin. The newsletters I’m reading think Suozzi might edge it. Either way, it’s a contest with huge implications for Republican control of the House, already evidently a rather chaotic, slim-margin thing, and for national rune-reading in an election year.
And after all that, there is the continued spectacle of speculation over the effect of the special counsel Robert Hur’sdecision to play neurologist and, while declining to indict Joe Biden over his retention of classified information, nonetheless discuss in great detail the 81-year-old president’s alleged problems with long- and short-term memory, including on matters of great personal concern. Expect the White House and Democrats to continue to hit back, attacking Hur, and Republicans and Donald Trump (77 and, um, apparently not sharp as a tack himself) to keep attacking Biden. Axios has worrying news for Democrats, though: Republicans, the site says, are planning to call Hur to testify in the Congress on his report (a normal step for special counsels) and transcripts of presidential interviews are also likely to be released.