The Senate released the text of the national security
supplemental bill on which a bipartisan team of negotiators has been working
for four months. Negotiators were working on adding a border component to an
urgent measure to fund aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Gaza, since extremist House
Republicans said they would not pass such a measure until Congress also
addressed what they insisted was a crisis at the U.S. border.
The measure appropriated $60.1 billion in military aid to
Ukraine, $14.1 billion in security aid for Israel, and $10 billion in
humanitarian aid for Palestinians, Ukrainians, and other civilians in crises.
It also invested about $20 billion in securing the southern border of the U.S.,
money to be used in hiring new officials, expanding detention facilities, and
increasing the screening abilities of border agents to detect illicit fentanyl
and other drugs.
Other provisions would trigger border closures if the volume of
migrants climbs past a certain number and make it more difficult to qualify for
asylum. At the same time, the measure offered more pathways to citizenship and
more work visas.
But it appears the MAGA Republicans never really intended for
such a measure to pass. They apparently thought that demanding that Congress
agree to a border measure, which it has not been able to do now for decades,
would kill the national security bill altogether. Certainly, once news began to
spread that the negotiators were close to a deal, both former president Trump
and House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who said he was conferring with Trump,
came out strongly against the measure even before anyone knew what was in it.
Trump and MAGA Republicans have been drumming up hysteria about
the border as an issue before the 2024 election in part because they have very
little else to run on. Voters are angry at the Republicans’ restrictions on
abortion—especially in Texas, which has had a number of high-profile cases—and
the economy is too strong for Republicans to get much traction by attacking it,
especially as the numbers under Biden are dramatically stronger than those
under Trump.
Keeping alive the immigration issue could cut into those numbers, especially in Texas. But as David Kurtz points out in Talking Points Memo today, it is a terrible mistake to forget that the measure Trump and the MAGA Republicans are blocking is primarily a bill to fund Ukraine’s war against Russia’s invasion, because the administration believes that Ukraine’s stand against Russia is vital for our own national security. Without U.S. weapons and money, Ukraine is running out of ammunition and Russian forces are beginning to take back the territory Ukrainian forces had pushed them out of.
Funding Ukraine is popular in the U.S., even among a majority of
non-MAGA Republicans. Americans recognize that Ukraine’s forces are not simply
defending their sovereign territory, they are defending the rules-based
international order that protects the United States. Russia’s president,
Vladimir Putin, is trying to destroy that order, replacing it with the idea
that bigger countries can conquer smaller countries at will.
Putin’s war on Ukraine has drained Russia’s money and men—just yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Russian civilian
airplanes are malfunctioning as sanctions bite—and Putin would clearly like the
U.S. to abandon Ukraine and clear the way for him to take control of the
country.
Trump and the MAGA Republicans have always had an unusually
close relationship with Putin. Over the weekend, former Fox News Channel
personality Tucker Carlson, who routinely echoed Russian talking points on his
show, was spotted in Moscow. Reports say he has been there since last Thursday, staying in the
city’s top hotels and visiting its main cultural sites.
Carlson was fired from Fox in the wake of the election lies in
which he participated, and which cost the company $787 million. He said on his
now-defunct show that in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, he was
“rooting for Moscow.” The Russian Union of Journalists has said they would
gladly accept Carlson as a member.
President Joe Biden and his administration, along with
congressional Democrats, are so adamant that the U.S. must aid Ukraine that
they were willing to cut a deal with the Republicans in order to get that
funding through. That deal did not include a path to citizenship for so-called
Dreamers, people brought to the U.S. without documentation as children who have
never known another home but this one, a demand Democrats in the past have
stood by. Biden today expressed
his frustration that the Republicans excluded the Dreamers from the bill, but
he still urged Congress to pass it.
Indeed, as soon as the bill was available, Biden urged Congress
to pass it immediately and promised to sign it into law as soon as Congress
sent it to him. Over the course of today, those interested in a border measure joined with
those interested in aiding Ukraine to call for the bill’s passage. The spectrum
of those urging Congress to pass the bill was wide. The right-leaning U.S.
Chamber of Commerce and the National Border Patrol union both called for the
bill’s immediate passage.
But MAGA Republicans stood against the bill from the start. By
midday, the top Republicans in the House—Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Majority
Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN), and Conference
Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY)—had released a statement saying: “Any consideration
of this Senate bill in its current form is a waste of time. It is DEAD on
arrival in the House. We encourage the U.S. Senate to reject it.” Although it
seemed clear that the measure would pass the House if it came to the floor,
Johnson said he would not introduce it.
A storm raged throughout the day as the Republican senators who
had negotiated the bill joined with Republican senators who want Ukraine aid
and with Democrats to demand the passage of the bill. Former U.S. ambassador to
Russia Michael McFaul noted that Johnson was “blocking the overwhelming
majority of the House. Last September, when a related piece of legislation was
on the floor, the House voted 311 to 117 in favor of continuing to provide
security assistance to Ukraine.” In the Senate, CNN’s Manu Raju reported,
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) urged the bill’s passage, noting: “This
is a humanitarian and security crisis of historic proportions, and Senate
Republicans have insisted—not just for months but for years—that this urgent
crisis demanded action.”
But by the end of the day, enough Republicans had peeled away
from the measure that senior senate reporter for Punchbowl
News Andrew Desiderio reported that McConnell had ceased to
push the measure, saying that “the political mood in the country has
changed.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI)
wrote. “They literally demanded specific policy, got it, and then killed it.”
Foreign affairs journalist Anne Applebaum reflected on the
teetering national security measure and wrote: “People will die, today, because of the cynical game played by the American
Republican party. Their irresponsibility is breathtaking.”
Foreign affairs specialist Tom Nichols of The
Atlantic wrote: “Letting Ukraine fall because of
[Republicans’] cultish loyalty to Trump will be a betrayal that will stain
America forever—and probably end up pulling us into a fight for Europe later.
This is one of the rare moments when the path to disaster is clearly marked and
avoidable.”
Former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) summed up the
day’s crisis over the national security measure: “On Trump’s orders,
Republicans in Congress are rejecting the border security deal. They’re
also abandoning America’s allies in Ukraine. Trump and the [Republicans] are
losing the war on purpose in an inexcusable betrayal that will strengthen
America’s enemies for years to come.”
—Heather Cox Richardson
Notes:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/ukraine-aid-border-bill-israel-senate
https://thehill.com/business/4448857-chamber-of-commerce-calls-for-immediate-passage-of-border-bill/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/05/us/politics/senate-border-ukraine-deal.html
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/02/05/congress/deal-nears-collapse-00139779
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