Congressional leaders are aiming to pass urgently needed aid for Ukraine and Israel by the end of the year, legislation that would be paired with several border policy changes required to gain GOP support.
The House and Senate moved quickly to pass legislation to avert a government shutdown last week, but assistance for the war-torn countries was left out. Israel aid has overwhelming support in Congress, but the $105 billion supplemental, requested by the White House, has faced resistance from conservatives over the $61 billion it would provide to Ukraine.
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That has left the legislation in limbo as the money the United States has already committed to the conflict begins to run out.
Senators on both sides of the aisle believe the supplemental could still be passed if a working group negotiating over the border can come to an agreement. But they view time as short and are working to get the bill to President Joe Biden’s desk by Christmas.
“I think it is going to need to have an immigration component if it has any chance of getting done before the end of the year,” said one Senate aide. “But when you inject such a hot-button issue like immigration into this, it definitely makes it all a little more difficult.”
“If this doesn’t get accomplished before the end of the year, it’s hard to see a scenario in which all of these priorities get accomplished in the new year,” the aide added.
Earlier this month, a working group led by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), James Lankford (R-OK), and Tom Cotton (R-AR) released a proposal to enact sweeping changes to immigration law modeled after H.R. 2, House Republicans’ signature border bill. The blueprint would attempt to limit immigrants’ ability to enter or stay in the country once they are apprehended and would require the president to restart border wall construction.
Democrats have said the parameters of the immigration proposal too closely reflect House Republicans’ immigration bill, which has been rejected by most of the party in the upper chamber. But Democrats, seeing Ukraine aid is at risk, have agreed to negotiate more narrow changes to immigration law.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), part of a working group meeting to strike a compromise, said last week that Democrats are engaged in conversation, but there’s still “a ways to go.”
“We’re definitely listening to Republicans, all the Republican concerns, they’re hearing our priorities,” Murphy told the Washington Examiner as lawmakers prepared to leave town for the Thanksgiving recess. “The fact that we’re still talking at 7:30 on a Wednesday night is positive.”
Murphy had initially expressed hope that talks could wrap up by the holiday, but it soon became clear that the conversations would drag into the weeks before the Christmas break instead.
“We need to get this all done by the end of the year, before the end of the year, the supplemental,” Graham said last week. “I am very supportive of Ukraine, but this is the best chance I’ve seen to get something real on the border. This is unsustainable.”
Senate GOP leadership insists that Republican support for more funding for Ukraine is dependent on putting in place stricter immigration policies amid growing concerns at the border with Mexico. In part, that’s because any deal on Ukraine would need to get through the Republican-led House, where Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is demanding the border policy changes in exchange for further support.
The lower chamber already passed a stand-alone bill to provide Israel with $14.3 billion in funding, but it also included cuts to the IRS that were quickly rejected by Senate Democrats. That has left Israel aid hanging in the balance as senators seek to broker a Ukraine-border deal.
“I think Democrats are going through the stages of grief, and eventually they will get to acceptance that they are not going to get a package absent of a strong border security provision,” said Sen. John Thune (R-SD), the No. 2 Republican in the Senate. “The policy that we put out there was really strong.”
The White House released its supplemental request in October, asking for money to hire 1,300 additional Border Patrol agents and 1,600 asylum officers, among other border funding requests. But Republicans have insisted that policy changes are necessary to stem the flow of immigrants at the southern border. Talks are also complicated by a mistrust that the Biden administration would actually implement whatever changes are agreed to.
“We’ve still got to overcome that foundational hurdle,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), a Republican member of the border working group. “Our members are absolutely calling for something measurable. They don’t trust the administration to implement just based on funding provisions. We need provisions that have the effect of law to get them to follow through.”
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Tillis, who is supportive of providing funding to both Israel and Ukraine, emphasized time is of the essence when it comes to approving aid to both countries.
“I really don’t know how long it will take, but I am very concerned as we’re pushing into January and February, and we are reaching a critical point,” he said.
