Senators on Sunday released a highly anticipated $118 billion package that pairs border enforcement policy with wartime aid for Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies, setting off a long-shot effort to push the bill through heavy skepticism from Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson.
The proposal is the best chance for President Joe Biden to resupply Ukraine with wartime aid — a major foreign policy goal that is shared with both the Senate’s top Democrat, Sen. Chuck Schumer, and top Republican, Sen. Mitch McConnell. The Senate was expected this week to hold a key test vote on the legislation, but it faces a wall of opposition from conservatives.
With Congress stalled on approving $60 billion in Ukraine aid, the U.S. has halted shipments of ammunition and missiles to Kyiv, leaving Ukrainian soldiers outgunned as they try to beat back Russia’s invasion.
The new bill would also invest in U.S. defense manufacturing, send $14 billion in military aid to Israel, steer nearly $5 billion to allies in the Asia-Pacific, and provide humanitarian assistance to civilians caught in conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.
It’s because of the lack of party discipline in the US political system. There’s no party whip to bring everyone in line, so bills need to cater to the whims of many individual politicians to get votes rather than being negotiated strictly at the leadership level.
There is. It tends to be the Senate Majority and Minority leaders in the Senate, and the Speaker in the House. Both parts of Congress do have official positions of Whips, but those are mostly secondary leaders. They don’t hold executive authority the way a Prime Minister does in a parliamentary system, so they can focus on being the external face of their portion of Congress, and the internal work of whips.
Democrats, for the most part, are all working on the same page. Nancy Pelosi–whatever her other faults–is actually very good at working the mechanisms of Congress to whip votes. Republicans, however, are eating each other in purity purges. If Matt Gaetz had his way, the party would continue these purges until it’s only a purified form of Matt Gaetz.
I’m almost nostalgic for the days of horsetrading politics where both parties needed to whip votes instead of things being a given along party lines. It resulted in a lot of shitty deals, but at least things got done.