WASHINGTON – US Senator Parry Murray (D) is calling for the final passage of a spending package which would send military aid to Ukraine and Israel.
Murray’s floor remarks criticized proposals from Senators Marsha Blackburn and Roger Marshall to decouple funding for Israel and Ukraine.
On Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R) announced that he plans to split aid packages to Ukraine and Israel, nixing a previously passed assistance bill and reflecting Blackburn and Marshall’s policy priorities.
“The Speaker has said…he wants us to get aid to Ukraine. Well, all he has to do…[is] put that bill to a vote,” Murray said during floor remarks on Monday. “Further delay—including by going back to the drawing board and sending something back to the Senate—will waste more time we simply do not have.”
Johnson is navigating a political tightrope between the majority of the Congress, which wants to pass aid to both Ukraine and Israel, and far-right members of the Republican caucus who allowed him to clinch the speakership in October.
The initial spending package passed by the Senate on Feb. 13 allocated approximately $60 billion to Ukraine and an additional $14.1 billion to Israel.
Johnson’s choice to split the funding into several bills will require each policy to be individually reexamined by both chambers of the Congress, delaying any potential financial boost to Israel or Ukraine. The new proposed Ukraine funding could include loans rather than traditional spending assistance.
The political tussle over funding takes place as Iran and Israel engage in escalating retaliatory violence and Ukraine struggles to engage with Russia on the battlefield according to the US Department of Defense.
Whether aid to both Ukraine and Israel would pass under a split policy framework is politically uncertain due to decreasing conservative Republican support for Ukraine and progressive Democratic frustrations with Israel’s actions in Gaza.
