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Administration backs broader bill providing funds to Ukraine, Israel and US border as it tells Congress to reject ‘this political ploy’

Joe Biden’s administration said on Monday he would veto a standalone bill backed by House Republicans that would provide aid to Israel, as it backs a broader bill giving assistance to Ukraine and Israel and new funds for border security.

“The administration strongly encourages both chambers of the Congress to reject this political ploy and instead quickly send the bipartisan Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act to the president’s desk,” the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement.

Officials from the Democratic president’s administration have been working for months with Senate Democrats and Republicans on a $118bn legislation package revealed on Sunday combining billions of dollars in emergency aid for Ukraine, Israel and partners in the Indo-Pacific region, with an overhaul of US immigration policy.

The bill includes $60bn in aid to Ukraine, $14.1bn for Israel in its war in Gaza, and about $20bn for new enforcement efforts along the US-Mexico border.

Republican House leaders said days before its release on Sunday night that they would reject the bipartisan Senate bill, and instead vote on a bill providing aid only to Israel.

The bill represented a rightward tilt in Senate negotiations over border measures, yet the backlash was intense from conservatives. They savaged the border policy proposal as insufficient, with Donald Trump leading the charge.

“This is a gift to the Democrats. And this sort of is a shifting of the worst border in history onto the shoulders of Republicans,” the former president and likely Republican presidential nominee said Monday on The Dan Bongino Show. “That’s really what they want. They want this for the presidential election so they can now blame the Republicans for the worst border in history.”

Many Senate Republicans – even those who have expressed support for Ukraine aid and the contours of the border policy changes – raised doubts Monday they would support the package. A private Republican meeting was scheduled in the evening to discuss it.

Still, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer moved toward a key test vote on Wednesday.

“The actions here in the next few days are an inflection point in history,” the New York Democrat said in a floor speech Monday afternoon. “The security of our nation and of the world hangs in the balance.”

Schumer worked closely with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on the border security package after the Kentucky Republican had insisted on the pairing as a way to win support for Ukraine aid. The Democratic leader urged his colleagues across the aisle to “tune out the political noise” and vote yes.

“For years, years our Republican colleagues have demanded we fix the border. And all along they said it should be done through legislation. Only recently did they change that when it looks like we might actually produce legislation,” he said.

Both Schumer and McConnell have emphasized for months the urgency of approving tens of billions of dollars for Ukraine’s fight, saying that the US’s ability to buttress democracies around the world was at stake. Yet with the funding stuck in Congress, the defense department has halted shipments of ammunition and missiles to Kyiv.

The Republican-majority House passed an Israel-only bill in November, but it was never taken up in the Democratic-led Senate, as members worked on Biden’s request for Congress to approve the broader emergency security package.

The statement from House speaker Mike Johnson and representatives Steve Scalise, Tom Emmer and Elise Stefanik pointed to a provision in the bill that would grant work authorizations to people who qualify to enter the asylum system. They also argued that it would endorse a “catch and release” policy by placing people who enter the asylum system in a monitoring program while they await the final decision on their asylum claim.

Under the proposal, people who seek asylum, which provides protection for people facing persecution in their home countries, would face a tougher and faster process to having their claim evaluated. The standard in initial interviews would be raised, and many would receive those interviews within days of arriving at the border.

Final decisions on their asylum claims would happen within months, rather than the often years-long wait that happens now.

But the House Republican leaders said: “Any consideration of this Senate bill in its current form is a waste of time.”