Senate Republicans blocked a bipartisan border package on Wednesday, scuttling months of negotiations with Democrats on legislation intended to cut back record numbers of illegal border crossings.
Many Republicans said the election-year compromise wasn’t enough, even as supporters of the bill insisted it was the best possible in a divided government.
Only 49 senators backed the measure, far short of the 60 ayes needed to take up the bill. It came after most Republicans said they would vote against the legislation, which also includes $60 billion in aid to Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel and was backed by President Joe Biden. Republicans had insisted that the money for conflicts abroad be paired with help for the border.
Forcing the showdown with Republicans, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, said earlier that he would try to salvage the wartime funding, and would next push ahead on a crucial test vote for tens of billions of dollars for Kyiv, Israel and other U.S. allies — a modified package with the border portion stripped out.
The bipartisan group of senators who negotiated the compromise for the last four months said it was a missed opportunity to try and make some progress toward one of the most intractable issues in American politics.
“It’s an issue that’s bedeviled, quite frankly, this body for decades,” Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, who led the negotiations, said. “It’s been three decades since we’ve passed anything into law to be able to change border security.”
Four Republicans including Sen. Susan Collins of Maine voted to move forward with the legislation. Six Democrats voted against it, some of whom said the border compromise went too far. Sen. Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, voted for the bill.
It is unclear if enough Republicans will vote to move ahead with the standalone legislation for the wartime aid, which also would need 60 votes in the 51-49 Senate. If it did pass, it would still take days for the Senate to reach a final vote.
As some Republicans have grown skeptical of sending money to Ukraine in its war with Russia, Schumer said that “history will cast a permanent and shameful shadow” on those who attempt to block it.
The roughly $60 billion in Ukraine aid has been stalled in Congress for months because of growing opposition from hardline conservatives in the House and Senate who criticize it as wasteful and demand an exit strategy for the war.
“We still need to secure America’s borders before sending another dime overseas,” Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah wrote in a post on X.
The impasse means that the U.S. has halted arms shipments to Kyiv at a crucial point in the nearly two-year-old conflict, leaving Ukrainian soldiers without ample ammunition and missiles as Russian President Putin has mounted relentless attacks.
A pairing of border policies and aid for allies — first proposed by Republicans — was intended to help squeeze the package through the House where archconservatives hold control. But GOP senators — some within minutes of the bill’s release Sunday — rejected the compromise as election-year politics.
The wartime funding also would invest in domestic defense manufacturing, send funding to allies in Asia, and provide $10 billion for humanitarian efforts in Ukraine, Israel, Gaza and other places.
It was not clear whether the new plan, even if it passed the Senate, would gain support from House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana. House Republicans are still insisting on a border plan, even though they rejected the deal negotiated in the Senate as insufficient.
“We’ll see what the Senate does,” Johnson told reporters Wednesday morning. “We’re going to allow the process to play out.”
After Donald Trump, the likely Republican presidential nominee, eviscerated the Senate’s bipartisan border proposal, Johnson quickly rejected it. Trump has also led many Republicans to question supporting Ukraine, suggesting he could negotiate an end to the war and lavishing Putin, including after Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Johnson said this week he wanted to handle wartime aid for Israel and Ukraine in separate packages, but a bill he advanced that only included funds for Israel failed on the House floor Tuesday night.
The White House said Biden believes there should be new border policy but would also support moving the aid for Ukraine and Israel alone, as he has from the start.
“Even if some congressional Republicans’ commitment to border security hinges on politics, President Biden’s does not,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said.
Story by Stephen Groves and Mary Clare Jalonick. Associated Press writer Seung Min Kim and Bangor Daily News writer Michael Shepherd contributed to this report.
