Senate Betrays America By Passing $95 Billion Military Aid Bill to Help Israel & Ukraine
Jose Nino
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Towards the end of April, the United State Senate passed a military aid package that funds Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine. In addition, this $95.3 billion foreign aid package forced the sale of the Chinese-based TikTok social media platform in the US.
This bill was passed on a 79-to-18 vote in the Senate.
In a statement he made from the White House on April 24, 2024, Biden declared the bill had gone through a hard-fought voting process. “But in the end, we did what America always does, we rose to the moment. We came together. We got it done.”
The measure features funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, in addition to humanitarian aid for Gaza, on top of provisions tacked on by the House, which include sanctions on Russia and Iran and the TikTok provision. Leaders in the Republican-controlled House made sure to modify the roughly $9.5 billion in economic assistance to Ukraine into forgivable loans as opposed to grants, in order to win over otherwise skeptical Republicans.
The bill had strong support in the Senate, with support from nearly all Democrats and the bulk of Republicans.
The proposal has roughly $60 billion allocated toward Ukraine, the majority of which would be injected into the US defense industry for more armaments such as ammunition and rocket launchers. This latest aid comes on the heels of the over $100 billion spent on Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion in early 2022.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz was one of the key Republican opponents of this legislation. He described his opposition to this bill as “one of the toughest votes I’ve cast during my years in the Senate,” declaring that his concerns that humanitarian assistance would end up in the hands of terrorists were not sufficiently addressed.
Ohio Senator JD Vance and Missouri Senator Josh Hawley were also key opponents of this bill. These Republicans are part of a slowly growing populist subset of Republicans who are embracing America First populist positions of foreign policy restraint and questioning the neoconservative consensus of perpetual wars.
Hopefully, such sentiments completely take over the rest of the Republican Party and orient it towards non-interventionism.
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