Biden threatens veto of House GOP’s standalone Israel aid bill

Biden threatens veto of House GOP’s standalone Israel aid bill

President Joe Biden would veto a proposed standalone aid package for Israel, the White House said Monday, as House Republicans look to tank a long-awaited bipartisan Senate border deal that would include aid to US allies.

“The Administration spent months working with a bipartisan group of Senators to reach a national security agreement that secures the border and provides support for the people of Ukraine and Israel, while also providing much-needed humanitarian assistance to civilians affected by conflicts around the world,” the White House wrote in a statement. “Instead of working in good faith to address the most pressing national security challenges, this bill is another cynical political maneuver.”

“The security of Israel should be sacred, not a political game,” the statement continued.

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., the lead GOP negotiator on a border-foreign aid package, speaks with reporters outside the chamber at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024. Any bipartisan border deal could be doomed because of resistance from former President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
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The bill, floated by House Speaker Mike Johnson last week, comes as the Senate’s $118.2 billion legislative package, which would give the president powers to significantly restrict illegal migrant crossings at the southern border as well as provide billions of dollars to Israel and Ukraine, faces mounting GOP opposition amid pushback from House Republicans and former President Donald Trump.

CNN previously reported that Johnson was planning to move a $17.6 billion Israel bill with no offsets, upping pressure on Democrats to support it, but it has run into some headwinds on the right and the left.

In an interview with CNN’s Manu Raju Monday, Johnson called Biden’s veto threat “a betrayal of our great ally and friend Israel in their time of desperate need.”

He added, “I mean, Israel is at war, they’re fighting for their very existence. And the idea that Joe Biden would suggest that he would not send a clean funding measure to assist them is just outrageous. And I think he’s gonna hear quite a bit about that being said that veto threat.”

The speaker has warned that the Senate border package, which includes $14.1 billion in security assistance for Israel, would be “dead on arrival” in the House and it has drawn Trump’s public ire, casting doubt on the bill’s odds of ever being made law – even if it were to pass out of the Senate, which appeared unlikely as of Monday night.

Johnson last week called on the Senate to swiftly take up the Israel bill, ratcheting up pressure on senators to abandon their efforts to keep Israel aid linked with other issues.

On Monday, the White House called upon Congress to pass the broader national security package, calling the standalone Israel aid bill a “ploy” that “does nothing to secure the border, does nothing to help the people of Ukraine defend themselves against (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s aggression, fails to support the security of American synagogues, mosques, and vulnerable places of worship, and denies humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians, the majority of whom are women and children.”