On Thursday, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would allocate $14 billion for military aid to Israel and cut spending on the American tax office. The majority in the Senate and President Biden , who threatened a veto, announced their opposition to the package and its separation from aid for Ukraine .
226 congressmen voted for the bill, including 12 Democrats, while 196 voted against it. Despite this, the law will probably not come into force because both the Senate and the president are against it, demanding that both funds for Israel and Ukraine be passed ( over USD 61 billion).
Military aid and budget cuts
The bill introduced by Republican congressmen envisages granting the Pentagon $14.3 billion for military aid to Israel and related expenses, including $4 billion to replenish the missiles of the Iron Dome and David’s Slingshot air defense systems , as well as over $1 billion for the development of the Żelazny laser system. Radius . Although these are the amounts requested by the White House from Congress, the project also includes cuts (also amounting to PLN 14.3 billion) from the IRS budget . According to Republicans, this decision was intended to offset the cost of aid to Israel, but according to an analysis of the budgetary effects prepared by the Congressional Internal Affairs Bureau ( CBO ), it will increase the budget deficit by almost $27 billion.
Among others for this reason, the project has little chance of coming into force. Leading senators of both parties, as well as President Biden, have from the beginning criticized both this measure and the omission of the request for funds for humanitarian aid for the Palestinians . Biden and the leaders of Republicans and Democrats in the Senate also demanded a vote on the entire amount of over $105 billion. a request for additional funds both for aid to Israel and to Ukraine , Taiwan, as well as to strengthen the submarine construction industry under the AUKUS partnership (an agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States for the exchange of defense technologies) and to strengthen national border protection .
Joe Biden is already announcing a veto
Even before the vote, the White House announced that it would veto the bill in the version proposed by Republicans if it reached the president’s desk. This will probably not be necessary, because the leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, announced that the bill adopted in the House will not be considered by the Senate at all, and instead the Senate will prepare its own bill, combining all the priorities sought by the White House.
“Let’s be clear: The Senate will not take up the deeply flawed GOP proposal in the House. Instead, we will work on our own bipartisan emergency relief package that includes funds to support Israel, Ukraine, humanitarian aid, including for Gaza , and competitive with the Chinese authorities,” the politician wrote on the social networking site X (formerly Twitter).
However, new House Speaker Mike Johnson and Republicans have so far insisted on keeping the two issues separate. Johnson himself, who in the past voted against subsequent packages of funds for Ukraine, admitted that he has changed his position and intends to allow the project containing funds for Kiev to be voted on next. It is unclear if or when the two chambers of Congress will reach an agreement on the final fate of the funding package. (PAP)
Source : forsal.pl
