Following months of debate, the United States House of Representatives voted Saturday to provide $95 billion in foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel in a package that now heads to the Senate for consideration.
With wide bipartisan support, the House passed measures to provide nearly $61 billion in aid to Ukraine, $26 billion in aid to Israel and $8 billion in security funding to the Indo-Pacific Region. The House also passed a measure that could ban the social media app TikTok, unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sells the company in the next nine months.
The four measures will be packaged into a single amendment and sent to the Senate, which could consider the legislation as soon as Tuesday. President Joe Biden has signaled support for the legislation if it ultimately makes it to his desk.
The additional funding to Ukraine proved to be the most contentious portion of the funding package. According to the clerk of the House, the proposal received unanimous support among Democrats, while a majority of Republican members rejected the measure.
The vote is the first time since December 2022, when Democrats still held control, that the House has voted to provide additional aid to Ukraine.
Third Congressional District Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Washougal, who previously introduced a separate foreign aid package, voted in support of all four measures that passed the House on Saturday.
“Across the globe, our allies and partners are facing increasing threats to freedom and democracy — and action is long-overdue. Today, I voted to rearm Ukraine against Putin’s Russia, help Israel defend itself, strengthen security in the Indo-Pacific, and get humanitarian relief to innocent civilians in Gaza and Ukraine,” Gluesenkamp Perez said in a statement Saturday. “I came to Congress to work across the aisle, get stuff done, and serve as an independent voice for Southwest Washington. For months, I’ve called on my colleagues to stop using these crises as a political football — and I’m glad Congress could reach a bipartisan solution today modeled off the bipartisan Defending Borders, Defending Democracies Act I’ve worked on for months.”
In mid-February, Gluesenkamp Perez joined a bipartisan group of seven Representatives in introducing the Defending Borders, Defending Democracies Act. While smaller in scope than the legislation that ultimately passed, the proposal would have provided defense-only spending to Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific.
The proposal would have also reimplemented a “remain in Mexico” policy for one year and required the Secretary of Homeland Security to “suspend the entry of inadmissible aliens at a U.S. land or maritime border” if necessary for operational control.
On Saturday, Gluesenkamp Perez was one of five Democrats to vote in support of the End the Border Catastrophe Act, a proposal that would have reimplemented the “remain in Mexico” policy and restarted construction of a wall along the southern border, among other immigration restrictions.
While the proposal received unanimous support among Republicans, and 215 representatives voted for its approval compared to 199 who voted against it, the legislation fell short of a two-thirds majority needed to pass.
In her statement, Gluesenkamp Perez noted a “worsening situation” at the southern border and said she is “committed to securing our border and halting the deadly flow of fentanyl into our communities.”
“President Biden has failed to end the crisis at our Southern Border, so I voted to do what he refuses to do: secure our border and stop the violent drug cartels pumping fentanyl into our country,” Gluesenkamp Perez said.
According to the Associated Press, the Border Patrol made 137,480 arrests of people crossing the southern border in March, a decrease from the 140,638 arrests the agency reported in February. The AP noted that border crossings typically increase during warmer months.
“Every country has an obligation to protect its citizens and secure its sovereign borders, and H.R. 3602 focuses on the urgent need to restore operational control of the Southern Border,” Gluesenkamp Perez said. “Unlike the unworkable and un-American immigration proposals pushed by far-right extremists, this bipartisan bill doesn’t create burdensome government mandates that would harm small businesses, agricultural employers, rural communities, and our economy.”
In her statement, Gluesenkamp Perez noted that she previously voted to fund the “largest Border Patrol workforce in our country’s history.”
“I’ll continue working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to fight the fentanyl crisis and work toward a border security solution that delivers for Southwest Washington,” she said.
Republican congressional candidate Joe Kent, Gluesenkamp Perez’s leading challenger, blasted the foreign aid legislation in a post on X.
“‘A bipartisan consensus!’” he wrote. “Translation: The DC political class profits from sending our money to defend foreign nation’s borders while our borders remain wide open. This won’t change until we elect new Reps, help me get to DC to fight for (America first).”
