After weeks of setbacks and delays, the US Senate gave final approval to a $95bn wartime aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other American allies early on Tuesday morning, sending the bill to the Republican-controlled House where its fate is uncertain.
In a pre-dawn vote, the Senate passed the measure 70 to 29, easily clearing the 60-vote threshold needed to pass most legislation in the chamber. Nearly all Democrats and 22 Republicans approved the bill, which exposed deep divisions within the GOP over America’s responsibility to its allies and its role on the world stage.
The measure includes $60bn in funding for Ukraine, where soldiers are running out of ammunition as the country seeks to repel Russian troops nearly two years after the invasion. Much of that money would go toward supporting Ukraine’s military operations and to replenishing the US supply of weapons and equipment that have been sent to the frontlines. Another $14bn would go to support Israel and US military operations in the region. More than $8bn would go to support US partners in the Indo-Pacific region, including Taiwan, as part of its effort to deter aggression by China.
It also allots nearly $10bn for humanitarian efforts in Ukraine, Israel and Gaza, where nearly a quarter of residents are starving and large swaths of the territory have been ravaged.
Joe Biden has urged Congress for months to rush aid to Ukraine, where military leaders have warned that their soldiers are running out of ammunition as they battle Russia on the frontlines nearly two years after the invasion.
“We cannot afford to wait any longer. The costs of inaction are rising every day, especially in Ukraine,” Biden said in a statement, applauding the bipartisan coalition of senators who approved the bill. “It is time for the House to take action and send this bipartisan legislation to my desk immediately so that I can sign it into law.”
The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, hailed passage of the aid package as a clear message to allies and foes that “American leadership will not waver, will not falter, will not fail”.
“Today, the Senate made sure that the United States is closer to meeting the monumental and consequential moment that we are in,” Schumer said in a press conference on Tuesday morning. “Now, it’s up to the House to meet this moment, to do the right thing and save democracy as we know it.”
But hours earlier Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, had in effect rejected the aid package because it lacked border enforcement provisions, saying it was “silent on the most pressing issue facing our country”.
“The mandate of national security supplemental legislation was to secure America’s own border before sending additional foreign aid around the world,” he said, adding: “In the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters. America deserves better than the Senate’s status quo.”
Johnson, under pressure from Donald Trump and his right flank, tanked an earlier version of the measure which included a bipartisan immigration deal intended to clamp down on illegal crossings at the US-Mexico border.
Beginning last year, conservatives insisted that the foreign aid package must be tied to border security measures aimed at curbing the record levels of migration to the US-Mexico border. A trio of senators negotiated for months, finally drafting a bipartisan proposal that many conservative commentators hailed as the most severe border clampdown in decades.
But with immigration poised to play a critical role in the November elections, Trump, all but certain to be the Republican nominee, was wary of handing anything resembling a political victory to the president. Border security is top of mind for many Americans, the overwhelming majority of whom disapprove of Biden’s handling of the issue.
Trump lashed out against the border deal, and his allies on Capitol Hill lined up against it, sealing its fate as the latest casualty in a long line of failed attempts by Congress to overhaul the nation’s beleaguered immigration system.
After Senate Republicans last week blocked a version of the bill that included border security, Schumer stripped it out and moved ahead with a narrowly tailored foreign aid package.
“Republicans demanded we tie the fate of the free world with border security and asylum reform,” said Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat who brokered the bipartisan border deal. He accused Republicans of backing away from the deal because Trump believes “chaos at the border is good for his campaign”.
He implored the House to act, adding: “The stakes could not be higher.”
Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and minority leader, championed the bill despite widespread hostility to the measure within his conference, fanned by Trump’s opposition.
“History settles every account,” he said in a statement. “And today, on the value of American leadership and strength, history will record that the Senate did not blink.”
Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Ukraine’s president, celebrated the bill’s passage in a post on X, writing that “continued US assistance helps to save human lives from Russian terror. It means that life will continue in our cities and will triumph over war.”
The Senate voted after an all-night session in which a coterie of Republican opponents launched a talking filibuster and marathon speeches to delay its passage.
“We’re being invaded – a literal invasion is coming across our border,” Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, declared in a floor speech on Monday. “And all they had time to do in the Senate was get the money, get the cash pallets, load the planes, get the champagne ready and fly to Kyiv.”
Paul last week voted against the bill that included border enforcement policies.
Other Republican opponents included Senator Lindsey Graham, once one of the chamber’s most prominent hawks and an outspoken critic of the Kremlin. But on Monday night, the Trump-critic-turned-loyalist echoed the former president and demanded that foreign aid be given in the form of a loan.
In a statement, he reiterated his support for Ukraine, but said he hoped the House would turn the “aid package into a loan instead of a grant”.
“Until that day comes, I will be voting no,” he wrote.
A handful of leftwing senators also opposed the legislation over their objections to the inclusion of billions of dollars worth of offensive military aid to Israel as the Palestinian death toll from its war in Gaza nears 30,000.
“I cannot vote to send more bombs and shells to Israel when they are using them in an indiscriminate manner against Palestinian civilians,” Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat of Oregon, said in a statement on Monday night. He was joined by both Vermont senators, Democrat Peter Welch and independent Bernie Sanders, who had previously sought to make aid to Israel conditional on whether its government was violating human rights and international accords in Gaza.
