Senate on track to pass $95 billion foreign aid package this week
CNN
The Senate will take up the House-passed $95 billion foreign aid package this week, as the legislation nears its final congressional action after both sides of Capitol Hill have struggled for months to send aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
The Senate will take up the House-passed $95 billion foreign aid package this week, as the legislation nears its final congressional action after both sides of Capitol Hill have struggled for months to send aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. The Senate begins with two procedural votes on Tuesday afternoon, interrupting a previously scheduled recess. While the chamber is expected to have enough support from both parties to pass the legislation, the exact timing for a final vote remains a question as any one senator can slow the process before sending the package to President Joe Biden for his signature, though it is expected to pass by midweek. The legislation ties together four bills that the House voted on separately in a rare Saturday session, providing nearly $61 billion in aid for Ukraine, over $26 billion for Israel and more than $8 billion for the Indo-Pacific. The first three bills are very similar to the package that the Senate passed earlier this year, which House Speaker Mike Johnson had originally refused to bring to the House floor. The fourth bill increases sanctions on Russian assets and contains language that could lead to a ban on TikTok in the US. It gives Chinese parent company ByteDance roughly nine months to sell TikTok, or the app will be banned from American app stores. The House took up the legislation after Johnson bucked conservatives in his party who opposed sending aid to Ukraine and threatened to oust him over his handling of the issue. In the end, the legislation was sent out of the House by a broad bipartisan margin. Aid for Ukraine and Israel has been stalled after House and Senate Republicans demanded action on border security first, leading to months of negotiations in the Senate on a border package tied to foreign aid. However, former President Donald Trump led the opposition to the final deal, and Republicans ultimately discarded it.
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