Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell are moving forward on a major Ukraine aid package, even as there’s a very good chance the next speaker is even less receptive than Kevin McCarthy was.
Majority Leader Schumer said he’s spoken specifically to McConnell about the issue and added “we’ll work together to get a big package done.” Ukraine was in the Senate’s bipartisan spending proposal last week, but was ultimately left out of the eventual stopgap government funding law approved over the weekend.
Now there’s no clear path forward, particularly since there isn’t even a House speaker. So the two Senate leaders appear willing to plunge forward on their own for now.
“We have large bipartisan majorities for aid to Ukraine, and we’re going to work to get it done,” Schumer said.
At the moment, the Biden administration doesn’t even have the transfer authority it needs to move assets around for Ukraine; that was also left out of the stopgap bill and now can’t be approved without a House leader. Then there’s the House candidates lining up to be speaker, including Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who does not support new aid.
And that’s to say nothing of the $24 billion the Biden administration requested for just three months of aid; a yearlong request is likely to be much larger. The Senate bill included only $6 billion of that amount, and even that turned out to be too tough to pass on a tight turnaround.
“It’s still a major priority. I think a majority of the members of both bodies will support it,” McConnell said. “We need some direction from the administration as to how to go forward.”
