February 13 – Very early this morning, the United States Senate passed a bill that put together more than $95 billion in aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
The package passed 70-29 in the Chamber.
The looming question is what will the US House of Representative do?
Pat Ryan of NewsTalk 103.7FM pointed out, “I’m going to give more money to freaking Ukraine, but no talk of let’s have a cease fire and let’s figure out some way here. You don’t hear any of that. It’s more money for Ukraine and that proxy war with Russia, but we better lecture Israel on protecting herself.”
Attorney Clint Barkdoll said, “There’s also some humanitarian aid in there for Gaza. I don’t know what the House does with this. (House Speaker) Johnson has signaled he won’t even allow it to come in for a vote. The fear is it’s going to pass. I wonder why he’s doing that.”
Congressman John Joyce said, “The Senate woke up and passed the supplemental bill, which is clear that it’s a non-starter in the US House of Representatives. The mandate of national security, any supplemental legislation needs to first be involving securing our own border. Before we send any additional foreign aid around the world, we need to protect the sovereignty of our country. Instead of going back to the drawing board and adding in border security legislation, we already passed that in the House of Representatives over 11 months ago and the Senate, they stripped it out of their legislation. The Senate legislation that was passed in the wee hours of the morning just this morning, it’s dead on arrival when it comes to the House. We need to first and foremost secure our border. We need to stop the drugs. We need to stop human trafficking. We need to stop the crime that’s coming into the United States. I cannot vote for any additional funding for foreign aid until our country is secure.”
Michele Jansen of NewsTalk 103.7FM asked, “So you feel sure that it will not be passed by the House the way it just came from the Senate?”
Joyce said, “I don’t think it should even be brought up to the House. I think it is a reprehensible piece of legislation and I don’t see any path forward to the United States House. I’m a hard no on that.”
Senator Rand Paul also worried that the package had verbiage that would tie the hands of all future presidents.
Barkdoll explained, “There’s this troubling commentary over the weekend where Donald Trump at a rally said that he would encourage Putin to invade NATO countries that have not paid their fair share of their NATO dues. That was a big issue. To Trump’s credit, when he was in office, he got a lot of those countries that had not been paying their fair share back into NATO. That comment is creating a lot of heartburn in the diplomatic community. So there’s this thinking that could Congress legislate the idea that the president cannot unilaterally pull countries in or out or make NATO decisions without Congressional action? That would go against long standing tradition. So that’s another noun issue that’s been thrown into this mix that’s going to be tricky.
Jansen said, “Trump unfortunately took the news media, gave them an excuse to get off the focus, I think of the far more important things like Biden’s competence, and then looking at this stuff more seriously. He didn’t mean he’d actually encourage Putin to go after NATO countries. But once again, we take something in that Trumpian way that he says stuff and the news media goes nuts with it and they take it seriously when they take nothing seriously when it comes to Biden and the other things that he’s done and said that are wrong. I just have to point out, if this would go through $60 billion of this $95 billion is going to go I think to Ukraine, then you add that to the $110. So it’s $170 billion. But remember, when the Democrats said $5 billion was too much to protect our southern border. Why are these hypocrites not pointed out for who they are? Rand Paul said something and I think he was right. This is a middle finger to the working men and women here in America that says we don’t care about you. We care more about Ukraine than we care about our southern border. And he’s right.”
Ryan suggested, “It’s the war ghouls that are lining their pockets. That’s all this is in Ukraine at this point.”
Barkdoll added, “Trump has also floated, I think, an interesting idea that’s worthy of some discussion in Congress and that is, he’s not necessarily opposed to these packages, but reclassify them as loans. Don’t just keep giving this money out, put strings on it, so that the US government, we the taxpayers, get paid back eventually for this and would that make them more accountable? Trump has made that suggestion and you’re seeing some people now in the Senate and Congress, saying that they don’t support this package, but they could get on board, if it would be reformed, more in the idea of a loan. So you think of the money that the US is just pumping over there and now a lot of this is in artillery and defense contractors in the US, but it’s still money. I mean $1 is $1, whether you’re mailing the dollar over there, or you’re sending it to a defense manufacturing company somewhere in the US. And still no end in sight. That’s the other thing about this. If you take a step back, maybe this package goes through or not, but no end in sight to this Russian Ukraine war. You hear of no negotiations, no peace treaty type talk. So I mean, this could go on for years and how much more money are they going to need?”
