Senate fails to advance Ukraine and Israel package over border deal disputes

The Senate voted Wednesday against advancing Sen. Chuck Schumer‘s (D-NY) request for $111 billion in foreign spending amid a standoff over a border deal that is critical for the bill’s passage.

The vote was 49-51, falling short of the 60-vote threshold needed to move forward on the aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan requested by the White House.

SENATE UKRAINE BRIEFING DESCENDS INTO CHAOS AHEAD OF MAJOR VOTE ON AID

Schumer scheduled the procedural vote after negotiators on both sides blamed one another for the stalemate on the border talks.

“Tonight is a sad night in the history of the Senate and in our country,” Schumer said after the failed vote, urging his GOP colleagues to get “serious.”

GOP leadership whipped members to oppose advancing the foreign aid package without the border agreement in place.

“I’m advocating and I hope all of our members vote no on the motion to proceed to the shell [bill] to make the point, hopefully for the final time, that we insist on meaningful changes to the border,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said late Tuesday.

For his part, Schumer warned that if the cloture vote failed, “it will not be a bipartisan failure.”

“It will be a failure solely caused by the Republican Party and the Republican leadership because it was a decision of that Republican leadership, pushed by the hard Right, many of whom want Ukraine to fail, to make border [aid] a precondition to supporting Ukraine,” the Senate’s top Democrat said.

President Joe Biden had linked Ukraine aid to Israel funding after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack to bring along more Republicans who had grown leery of Ukraine aid. Republicans, in turn, linked Ukraine aid to border security reforms.

“This cannot wait,” Biden said Friday. “Congress needs to pass supplemental funding for Ukraine before they break for the holiday recess. It’s as simple as that. Frankly, I think it’s stunning that we’ve gotten to this point in the first place.”

Negotiators have not made progress in more than a week on the border negotiations, which have centered on possible changes to federal asylum policy and how the Biden administration uses the humanitarian parole authority.

Democrats have accused Republicans of making unreasonable asks that would not have majority support in the Democratic conference. The GOP has claimed that Democrats are unwilling to meet them in the middle on solutions that would lead to a tangible decrease in illegal border crossings.

The package required 60 votes to advance to the floor, though it will only need a simple majority of 51 votes to pass. Democrats control the Senate 51-49, meaning they need full party support and nine Republicans to invoke cloture on the bill.

Schumer and McConnell have been in lockstep on supporting the effort to combine Israel and Ukraine aid. The two have also backed the inclusion of border security, though they differ on specifics, as a means to push the bill through both chambers. Taiwan assistance was additionally included to help broaden support for the bill.

Wednesday’s cloture failure does not mean Biden’s funding request is dead, as Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) noted to the Washington Examiner ahead of the vote.

“This is a moment where each caucus is sending a signal to the other. Many Republicans have said to me, ‘We have to have a field vote so you know we’re serious about demanding a change in border policy,’” Coons said. “We also think that a failed vote sends a very serious signal — to Ukraine, to China, to Hamas, to many, to Iran — that we are not making the progress we have to in providing urgently needed support to our partners and allies.”

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Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Ben Cardin (D-MD) predicted that the defense package would ultimately get done, telling reporters that Democrats “will continue to pursue this until we get [the] supplemental.”

McConnell, who is arguably Ukraine’s most significant ally in the GOP, has been meeting privately with allies to discuss other strategies, a source familiar tells the Washington Examiner.