JUST IN: Chuck Schumer to push for vote on Ukraine, Israel funding after border bill fails

When Joe Biden was asked on Tuesday if he would consider a stand alone spending bill that just addresses funding for the wars in Ukraine and Israel, he said he was "not gonna concede that now." Yet on Wednesday, it was revealed that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer intends to attempt to do just that.

Schumer told Senate Dems that he intends to force a vote on the funding, NBC reports, which was part of a bill that gave $60 billion to Ukraine, $14 billion to Israel, and $20 billion to the US border, though the spending did more to increase the flow of illegal immigration than to slow it. House Speaker Mike Johnson said the "border never closes" bill would not be taken up in the House.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who helped craft the bill, pulled his support from it on Tuesday as the pushback increased, now supports a stand-alone vote on aid for Ukraine without effective border measures attached. 

In the fall, when Biden demanded more money for the war in Ukraine, Republicans said they would not approve it without actual border security for America. That was not delivered in the border bill, and now the funding alone is back on the table. 

Senator Mike Lee predicted the move after the absolute disaster of the Emergecy National Security Supplemental bill, the text of which was released to round disapproval from Republicans in both the House and Senate.

"I have it on good authority that The Firm," by which he means Schumer and McConnell, "intends to force through the Ukraine aid portion of the supplemental aid package (minus the border bill) tomorrow. Do you want to give $60B to Ukraine, knowing that the entire budget of the U.S. Marine Corps in FY2023 was $53.8B?"
 

"There are other parts of this supplemental they’re extremely important as well — Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan," McConnell said. "We still, in my view, ought to tackle the rest of it because it’s important. Not that the border isn’t important, but we can’t get an outcome. So that’s where I think we ought to head, and it’s up to Senator Schumer to decide how to repackage this, if in fact we don’t go on to it."