Senate passes $95 billion package sending aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan after months of delay
Apr 23, 2024, 7:53 PM | Updated: Apr 24, 2024, 8:33 am
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill on April 17. The Senate will take up the House-passed $95 billion foreign aid package this week. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)
(Andrew Harnik/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)
Washington (CNN) — The Senate on Tuesday passed a long-delayed $95 billion package after both sides of Capitol Hill have struggled for months to send aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
Rep. John Curtis joins us live at 9:35!
The legislation next goes to President Joe Biden to sign it into law. Its passage is a significant victory for the US president, congressional Democrats and Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, who long pushed to send aid to Ukraine even as the right wing of his party increasingly soured on support for Kyiv.
The package ties together four bills that the House voted on separately in a rare Saturday session, providing nearly $61 billion in aid for Ukraine, over $26 billion for Israel and more than $8 billion for the Indo-Pacific. The first three bills are very similar to the package that the Senate passed earlier this year, which House Speaker Mike Johnson had originally refused to bring to the House floor.
The fourth bill increases sanctions on Russian assets and contains language that could lead to a ban on TikTok in the US. It gives Chinese parent company ByteDance roughly nine months to sell TikTok, or the app will be banned from American app stores.
Asked if he expected the bill to pass Tuesday, McConnell told CNN: “Hope so.”
READ MORE: Senate passes bill forcing TikTok parent company to sell or face ban, sends to Biden for signature
The House took up the legislation after Johnson bucked conservatives in his party who opposed sending aid to Ukraine and threatened to oust him over his handling of the issue. In the end, the legislation was sent out of the House by a broad bipartisan margin.
Aid for Ukraine and Israel has been stalled after House and Senate Republicans demanded action on border security first, leading to months of negotiations in the Senate on a border package tied to foreign aid. However, former President Donald Trump led the opposition to the final deal, and Republicans ultimately discarded it.
McConnell, who has consistently broken with his party over backing Ukraine, described Tuesday’s vote as “overdue” and “a test, and we must not fail it.”
“Here’s what I know to be true: American prosperity and security are the products of decades of American leadership,” McConnell said. “Our global interests come with global responsibilities. Healthy alliances lighten the burden of these responsibilities.”
This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.
CNN’s Manu Raju and Kristin Wilson contributed to this report.
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