Senate Republicans splinter over Biden’s request to link Israel and Ukraine funds

Senate Republicans are divided on how to approach President Joe Biden’s $106 billion supplemental funding request, which pairs aid packages for Israel and Ukraine.

Members ranging from defense hawks to populists have lambasted the approach of combining the bills since Biden sent Congress the request last Friday, and the party has leverage to demand changes are made to the package. Democrats control the Senate by a 51-49 margin, leaving them in need of 9 GOP votes to bypass the legislative filibuster and pass the bill.

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In addition to the $61 billion for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel, the supplemental requests billions in funding for Taiwan and for border security.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who has largely been supportive of the Biden administration’s efforts to pass all four items together, said at his weekly press conference on Tuesday that it was “pretty clear that the supplemental that was sent up is just a certain starting point.”

“We’re gonna go over it with a fine-tooth comb,” he added. “As you can see, there’s a lot of passion among our members about having a credible border security provision in there, and we’re gonna make other changes as well.”

The vast majority, if not all, of the Senate GOP conference is in favor of Israel aid. The same cannot be said for Ukraine assistance. While more than half of the 49 Republicans support some type of continued U.S. aid to Ukraine, there is a vocal population of the conference that strongly opposes such measures.

Those members, backed by a number of pro-Ukraine colleagues, have urged Senate leadership to separate the package into individual aid bills. These Republicans have argued doing so would improve the chances of the Israel bill passing faster and would prevent members who oppose Ukraine aid from having to vote for more aid.

A group of four GOP senators, including one who has voted for Ukraine assistance in the past, introduced legislation on Thursday that would act as stand-alone Israel aid legislation. The bill, led by Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS), has the support of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who has backed Ukraine support but says Israel aid should not be held up as part of a larger package.

“They should be separated,” Cruz said of his concerns. “What Biden is trying to do is hold Israel military assistance hostage in order to try to force through his other priorities.”

“This bill is a cynical bill, designed to take the wide bipartisan support for military assistance to Israel and use that as a Christmas tree to hang every other left-wing priority onto it,” he explained of the president’s $106 billion request. “We should vote on Israel military assistance, free and clear, and it would pass overwhelmingly. And every other thing attached to it is the swamp at its very worst.”

Not everyone in the Senate GOP conference agrees that the aid bills should be brought up individually.

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK), the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services subcommittee that handles military readiness, has argued for months that Ukraine and Taiwan aid should be packaged together in order to ensure the bill has enough bipartisan support to pass through both chambers in a divided Congress.

“There’s all this focus on Ukraine, but the aperture of threats is much bigger than just Ukraine. And I think, by the way, you get a lot more votes when it’s that way,” Sullivan told the Washington Examiner in September.

Sullivan’s fellow defense hawks echoed their support this week for combining the bills, including Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Susan Collins (R-ME), the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

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Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-SD) has not taken a stance on the matter, at least not publicly. A GOP senator who attended Wednesday’s conference luncheon told the Washington Examiner that Thune, the No. 2 Senate Republican, did not make his position known during the weekly meeting.

Asked about the matter later Wednesday, Thune told reporters: “We’re still having conversations about that. I think we have to figure out where the conference is.”