For months, the Biden Administration has wanted Congress to get him an aid package bill for Ukraine, Israel, Palestine, as well as Taiwan.
For months, certain members of the House have said “no” to that request.
This week, Speaker Mike Johnson worked with Democrats in getting an aid bill passed and sent over to Congress.
Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) is not pleased and says in a release that she voted no on the aid package, explaining in a press release that it is just not feasible to give more aid to countries when there is so much to be done for the United States, including “failure to secure our own borders.”
“Under this administration, the people of Wyoming have watched the cost of living and our national debt reach unprecedented heights as Senate Democrats have carelessly spent their hard-earned tax dollars to fund their partisan priorities and saddled future generations with insurmountable debt,” said Lummis. “We have a responsibility to be good stewards of the taxpayers’ hard-earned money by finding ways to pay for the legislation we pass. I am disappointed this $95 billion package is not paid for, which is why I voted against it.”
Ahead of the vote, Sen. Lummis introduced an amendment to this legislation to ensure that it would be paid for and does not further increase the United State’s deficit. Lummis’ amendment would install Fiscal Year 2025 spending caps to protect Wyoming taxpayers from having to foot the bill for this $95 billion foreign aid package.
Last week, she joined her colleagues in sending a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) urging him to vote on aid to each country separately instead of merging it all into one massive spending package.
The package was approved 79-18 on Tuesday evening with thirty-one Republicans joining with 48 Democrats to pass the legislation. That’s nine more Republicans than supported the aid package when the Senate last considered it in February. Two Democrats — Sens. Jeff Merkley and Peter Welch — as well as independent Sen. Bernie Sanders voted against the legislation along with 15 Republicans.
The bill ultimately passed in the Senate and arrived on the President’s desk Wednesday after months of negotiations, consternation, and debate. Wearing a Ukraine pin on his lapel, President Biden signed the it, allowing $95M aid package to go to Ukraine, Israel, Palestine, and Taiwan, emphasizing that it was a “good day for America, a good day for Ukraine and a good day for world peace.”
Broken down by country, the aid package will be divided up as follows: nearly $61 billion in aid to Ukraine, $26 billion for Israel and $8 billion for the Indo-Pacific. The package also includes a bill that could eventually lead to the banning of TikTok in the United States – giving Chinese parent company ByteDance roughly nine months to sell it or else it will be banned from app stores in the United States.
The aid package, Biden said, is “going to make America safer. It’s going to make the world safer. And it continues America’s leadership in the world.”
The final draft for the aid package and the signing of the President came after months of tense negotiations, between Republicans, Democrats, as well as personal lobbying from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. a
Hardline House conservatives, known as the House Freedom Caucus, opposed further US funding to Ukraine and threatened to oust Johnson over his handling of the negotiations.
Conservatives in Congress have opposed additional assistance for what they view as an unwinnable war and the fact that they argue the US could use that money to help fix the crisis at our southern border.
