Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, predicted Sunday that approval of an aid package to Ukraine and Israel is unlikely before the end of the year.
Turner identified the White House’s southern border policies as an obstacle for passing the aid package for Ukraine and Israel before the end of the year on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” House Republicans had passed a $14.3 billion aid deal earlier this month solely for Israel, but that package likely faces an uphill battle in the Senate and is opposed by the White House because it also does not include aid to Ukraine. The Israel-only bill also established the cutting of added IRS funding opposed by the GOP that the White House established in a bill last year.
“I think it would be very difficult to get it done by the end of the year and the impediment, currently, is the White House policy on the southern border,” Turner said Sunday. “The White House in this package making — including it as a national security package, recognizing that the southern border is a threat, put in funding, but it’s going to need policy changes.”
“Congress is going to require that there’ll be laws [changing] to — to make certain that the border returns to its prior state, you know, perhaps ‘Remain in Mexico,’ other types of provisions that would secure the southern border,” he continued.
The White House had proposed last month a roughly $106 billion national security supplemental funding request that included money for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan as well as humanitarian aid and border security measures. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) already announced that the upper chamber would not take up the House GOP’s proposal earlier this month, and the White House has maintained that President Biden would not sign a bill that aids only Israel.
“Let me be clear: The Senate will not take up the House GOP’s deeply flawed proposal,” Schumer said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, at the time. “Instead we will work on our own bipartisan emergency aid package that includes funding for aid to Israel, Ukraine, humanitarian aid including for Gaza, and competition with the Chinese Government.”
There are a growing number of House GOP members who are opposed to approving more aid for Ukraine, which is still battling Russian forces after Moscow invaded Ukraine more than a year and a half ago. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) floated that he wants to pair funding for Kyiv with border security.