The Republican minority in the Senate blocked this Wednesday in a preliminary vote the White House’s request for a new batch of aid to Ukraine, despite last-minute calls from President Joe Biden, who assured that the injection of funds “will not be it can wait”. A total of 49 senators have opposed the provision of 105 billion dollars (about 97 billion euros) for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and the border with Mexico. The measure needed the support of sixty legislators to move forward.
The Republican senators, who demand that the economic measure also include a harsh reform of the immigration system, have been joined by the independent Bernie Sanders, normally aligned with the Democrats. This progressive legislator opposes the nearly $14 billion provided for Israel in that package. He also ended up voting against the Democratic majority leader, Charles Schumer, on a procedural matter, so he could introduce the motion again in the future.
After the vote, Schumer declared that the result creates “a serious moment that will have lasting consequences for the 21st century” and endangers the Western democratic model.
The blockade highlights growing resistance within the United States to continue disbursing aid to Ukraine in a conflict to which there is no end in sight. As the war approaches its second anniversary and kyiv’s counteroffensive has failed to achieve its initial objectives, public attention has turned to the war between Israel and Gaza.
This Wednesday’s rejection is not necessarily definitive, but it does represent a hard blow for Democrats and infuses new urgency into the conversations that the two parties were already developing to reach an agreement on immigration policy. Those negotiations had come to a standstill this weekend.
In a televised appeal from the Yellow Room of the White House, Biden had implored lawmakers to approve the funding. The failure of the measure would be “the best gift” that Russian President Vladimir Putin could receive, according to the president. Without American support for Ukraine, the Kremlin’s tenant could dominate the invaded country and “would not stop there,” he explained. Russia could harass countries on NATO’s eastern flank to the point of forcing the application of Article 5, which requires the nations of the Atlantic Alliance to intervene militarily in the event of an attack against one of its members.
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“We would be faced with a situation that we do not want or seek: that American troops would have to fight against Russian troops” on European soil, stressed Biden, who has declared himself willing to do “significantly more” to reinforce security on the border with Mexico. and get Republican support.
Biden’s intervention is part of an intense campaign by the White House in recent days to obtain approval of these funds, which include $61 billion to help Ukraine repel the Russian invasion. The president of the United States met by videoconference this Wednesday with the leaders of the rest of the G-7 countries to reiterate his government’s support for kyiv. On Monday, the presidential office warned that the funds available to Ukraine will run out this month and, without new weapons and ammunition, the invaded country risks losing what has been achieved in almost two years of fighting. Senior Ukrainian officials visiting Washington, including Defense Minister Rostam Umerov, have reiterated the same peremptory call: if assistance is not renewed, Ukraine risks losing the war.
To approve the provision of funds, Republicans – including those who support aid to the invaded country – demand that measures be included to tighten US immigration policy. Democrats assure that they are willing to address immigration reforms—an issue on which the two parties have not been able to agree for decades—but not to make concessions with the level of toughness demanded by the opposition.
The leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, Charles Schumer, has offered to present simultaneously in the plenary session the request for funds from the White House and a bill to combat fentanyl trafficking. Schumer has declared himself willing for Republicans to include an amendment, drafted by them, on border security, to further control arrivals from Mexico.
The intensity of the dispute had become clear a day earlier: a closed-door briefing in which the White House was going to explain to senators from both parties the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine degenerated into a fight over shouts among parliamentarians about the security of the border with Mexico. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was also scheduled to intervene in that same session by videoconference from his country, although his participation was canceled at the last minute for unclear reasons.
The leader of the Republican minority in the upper house, Mitch McConnell, one of the great defenders of aid to Ukraine – which he considers essential to protect American national security – has urged the parliamentarians in his caucus to reject the request. “I hope all of our members will vote no on the motion (for the Senate to debate and vote on the funding request) to make clear, hopefully for the last time, that we insist on meaningful reforms to border policy.”
Both parties are slaves to their voters in this debate. Republicans demand toughness on the border in the face of the drastic increase in entries of irregular immigrants seeking asylum during Biden’s mandate, one of the issues that most concern his supporters. And they also seek to respond to the growing unpopularity of the Ukrainian cause among their supporters, when the campaign for the US elections next November is about to formally begin. The United States is the main supporter of Ukraine, to which it has allocated $67 billion, but Republicans believe that kyiv has already received enough assistance. Some consider that it has not been sufficiently accounted for.
For their part, the Democrats, who almost unanimously support aid to the allied country, must exercise a delicate balance. Its progressive wing resists imposing measures that restrict immigration, and demands, on the contrary, steps to normalize the situation of irregular immigrants within the country. But at the same time, legislators from the moderate wing who are running for re-election next year in hinge or Republican-leaning states demand that initiatives be taken to control entry into the country, under penalty of losing their seats in the elections.
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