Rand Paul is sounding the alarm on a new $95B foreign bill that funds Ukraine and Israel and does nothing for the border. It’s really just a stripped down version of the last ‘border bill’ that got defeated in the Senate.
Tonight the bill passed its first hurdle 64-19 to begin debate:
A $95 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific could be on its way to the House early next week after months of setbacks in the Senate.
The Senate voted 64 to 19 on Friday night to officially begin debate on the foreign aid supplemental and is expected to work through the weekend after some Republicans demanded that the legislation include border security provisions, while others objected to it outright.
The procedural vote sets up several days of debate and additional votes that are likely to bleed into the start of the Senate’s two-week recess, which is supposed to begin Monday.
“The Senate will keep working on this bill until the job is done,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said Friday.
Here’s what Paul had to say about it:
PAUL on forcing senate to go through regular order on $95B foreign aid package: "We're going to beat the crap out of them for being for someone else's border and not our own."
— Aishah Hasnie (@aishahhasnie) February 10, 2024
PAUL: "This is complete capitulation on the border, as if we don't really care about our border, but we care about Ukraine's border… our base doesn't agree with that… it’s very, very unpopular, and I just consider it my job to make sure everybody at home knows." https://t.co/Z92zyoWNmb
— Aishah Hasnie (@aishahhasnie) February 10, 2024
Paul is absolutely right. They just gave up on the border and want to keep the Ukraine portion of the bill. Ukraine was already getting way more money that then border and now they don’t want to do anything about the border.
Why? Because the last border bill wasn’t really about the border. It was about giving Biden an excuse to claim MAGA Republicans are blocking him from fixing the border.