Senate leadership said Tuesday it was ready for the White House to send a supplemental aid request for Israel and possibly Ukraine later this week — as the House of Representatives is preoccupied with choosing a new speaker.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) signaled support for the expected spending, which will face an uncertain road to passage in the Republican-controlled House.
“We’d like to get the supplemental package moved as quickly as possible, because the needs are great in both Israel and Ukraine,” said Schumer, who led a bipartisan delegation to Israel over the weekend.
“The administration is supposed to send us one at the end of this week. I’m working with Leader McConnell to get it done ASAP.”
“We anticipate the administration will send up a supplemental that deals with Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan,” McConnell added, “and Republicans are going to want something serious about the border.
“We’ll take a look at the package when they send it up. Make suggestions to improve it if that’s needed. But clearly, the world has changed dramatically in the last 10 days.”
The 81-year-old McConnell also underscored that “all of us are heartbroken and disgusted, really, by the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israel.”
A few Senate Republicans such as JD Vance of Ohio have demanded assistance to Israel be considered separately from Ukraine funding.
But the real trouble is in the House of Representatives where Republicans such as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) have vehemently opposed additional aid to the Kyiv government.
By rule, the House cannot proceed to other business until a speaker is chose to replace Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) following his ouster Oct. 3.
“You guys cover the House. I got my hands full here in the Senate,” McConnell told reporters when asked about the state of the lower chamber, where a vote to elevate Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) failed Tuesday afternoon.
“The House is sort of the mess,” Schumer lamented. “And therefore, we think the best thing to do is pass a strong, big supplemental with strong bipartisan support and that may force the House to act.”
“There are no words — no words for the horror we saw,” Schumer added when asked about his trip to Israel, recounting that the Jewish state’s ambassador to China had told him “about a kibbutz where they rounded up 100 people … they herded them into the rec room, from ages 80 to three months. They machine-gunned all of them down.”
“It reminded me of what happened to my family when the Nazis came in Ukraine,” he continued. “They asked my great-grandmother to put her whole greater family on the porch. She did, 35 people aged 88 to three months, and they machine-gunned all of them down.
“So many of us understand this, and it’s seared in our memories,” Schumer went on. “So, it was an awful, awful day.”
The 72-year-old also stressed that the US should “remind Israel that she must be humanitarian, that she must obey the rule of war and must minimize civilian casualties among the Palestinians.”
At one point, McConnell took a rare public jab at former President Donald Trump for describing Lebanese militant group Hezbollah as “very smart” and criticizing Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a campaign rally in Florida last week.
“I disagree with him. Hezbollah is a terrorist organization just like Hamas, funded by the same source — Iran,” McConnell said. “And Prime Minister Netanyahu is one of the great leaders of modern times.”
Trump’s campaign had defended his remarks, arguing that he “was clearly pointing out how incompetent Biden and his administration were by telegraphing to the terrorists an area that is susceptible to an attack” and that “smart does not equal good.”
Biden was due to leave the White House for Israel at some point Tuesday, with his arrival set for early Wednesday.
The Oct. 7 terror attack on southern Israel by Hamas has killed more than 1,300 people, including at least 30 Americans. Another 13 US citizens are reported missing, with some held hostage in the Gaza Strip.