Congress has several priority tasks before it can go home for Christmas. There’s a reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration and a defense policy bill that has to be passed, and both parties have to start thinking about the two-part deadline to fund the government.
But there is a growing urgency to pass bills giving Israel $14.3 billion in aid and $61 billion in assistance to Ukraine. An additional $7.5 billion would be spent on countering China and securing the Indo-Pacific region, including Taiwan, and $9 billion for humanitarian aid to Israel, Gaza, and Ukraine.
The House has already passed an Israeli military aid bill, but it’s likely DOA in the Senate because of a controversial rider added to the bill that would subtract $14.3 billion from the IRS budget.
In the Senate, the Ukraine aid package tied up in a fight over a comprehensive immigration bill that Republicans want to tie to funding for Kyiv. And Democrats in the Senate want to add all sorts of humanitarian conditions to the Israeli aid measure.
“The biggest holdup to the national security assistance package right now is the insistence by our Republican colleagues on partisan border policy as a condition…
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