The government won't shut down this weekend, but President Joe Biden still has plenty of budget headaches.
Biden signed a continuing resolution late Thursday that kicks the government shutdown controversy to January. That still leaves him looking for ways other than the stopgap to secure more funding for Israel and the war in Ukraine.
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The laddered continuing resolution, the first under new House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), will fund military construction, veterans affairs, transportation, housing, energy, and other agencies through Jan. 19, with the remainder seeing their funding run out two weeks later.
Nearly all House Democrats and roughly half of Republicans supported it, while it flew through the Senate on an 87-11 vote. Part of the reason for that easy passage was that the bill does not meet Biden's funding requests for Ukraine and Israel aid, plus other touchy subjects such as funding for the southern border.
Biden acknowledged as much in a statement on Friday.
"Last night, I signed a bill preventing a government shutdown. It's an important step, but we have more to do," Biden said Friday morning. "I urge Congress to address our national security and domestic needs — and House Republicans to stop wasting time on extreme bills and honor our bipartisan budget agreement."
Biden faces skepticism on Ukraine funding mostly from figures on the Right who question what they describe as a "blank check" policy toward the embattled nation since Russia invaded in February 2022. Skepticism on Israel funding has emerged mostly from the far Left, though a further complication is the various efforts to tie different parts of the funding together.
Earlier this month, the House passed a stand-alone Israel aid bill that would have been paid for with cuts to the IRS. The bill promptly died in the Senate. Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) criticized the move, saying it would delay any Israel aid until at least the week after Thanksgiving. Now, that timeline is rapidly approaching with little apparent progress.
"There are still over 240 hostages, 10 of them being American hostages,” Marshall said in remarks shared exclusively with the Washington Examiner prior to a Tuesday news conference. “We do not have that type of time to waste. Israel needs our help right now.”
"It’s unconscionable to me that in Israel's time of need, Democrats see their pain as a time to revive their never-ending desire to send money to Ukraine," Marshall continued.
Biden, and most Democrats, would rather combine Israel aid with assistance for Ukraine, Taiwan, and U.S. border security at a cost of roughly $105 billion.
Some of the most outlandish examples of the Right's growing Ukraine funding skepticism have come from presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
"Ukraine is not a paragon of democracy," he said during the third GOP debate. "This is a country that has banned 11 opposition parties. It has consolidated all media into one state TV media arm. That's not democratic. It has threatened not to hold elections this year unless the U.S. forks over more money."
Ramaswamy proceeded to attack Volodymyr Zelensky as "a comedian in cargo pants" and all but insinuated the Ukrainian president, who is Jewish, is a "Nazi." That's not the view of most Republicans in Congress, though many want to tie their Ukraine votes to policy changes at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Biden White House continues to push for all four priorities of Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and the southern border as a single piece of legislation, something it hopes to corral a divided Congress over in the coming weeks.
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"The Biden administration put forward a funding request for Israel, for Ukraine, for the Indo-Pacific, and for the border," national security adviser Jake Sullivan said during a Tuesday press briefing. "We detailed exactly what we needed, including for Ukraine, and we still need that, and we need it as soon as we can get it. And we are working actively with both the House and the Senate, both Republicans and Democrats, to secure the votes and to get the vote to get that funding."
Congressional approval for the $105 billion legislation will in all likelihood come down to whether a bipartisan group of senators can strike a deal on a pared-down version of the border policy changes Republicans are demanding.