“If we don’t aid Ukraine, Putin will walk all over Ukraine, we will lose the war, and we could be fighting in eastern Europe in a NATO ally in a few years.”
Speaking with MSNBC on Monday morning, after the Senate released its bipartisan national security bill that includes funding for Ukraine, border security, and Israel, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the bill needs to pass or "we could be fighting in eastern Europe, in a NATO ally in a few years."
Schumer said negotiations on the bill "took a long time" and lawmakers "fell off the tracks a whole bunch of times."
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View on X"This bill is crucial, and history will look back on it and say, 'did America fail itself?'"
Schumer said this bill is "crucial" because "if we don’t aid Ukraine, Putin will walk all over Ukraine, we will lose the war, and we could be fighting in eastern Europe in a NATO ally in a few years, Americans won’t like that."
"If we don’t help Israel defend itself against Hamas, that perpetual war will go on and on and on. If we don’t help humanitarian aid to the starving Palestinians in Gaza, hundreds of thousands could starve."
"And the border, everyone has said it’s chaos," he added.
Schumer said that "too many Republicans, including Speaker Johnson, are just scared to death of Donald Trump. Donald Trump has said he wants chaos. Donald Trump has said, ‘Well wait until I become president,’ that’ll take at least a year. Ukraine could be gone. The border will get much worse. War in the Middle East will get worse."
Schumer questioned whether senators would "drown out the political noise from Trump and his minions and do the right thing for America."
The $118 billion national security supplemental package includes $60 billion in funding for Ukraine, the highest amount for any singular item in the package.
The bill also includes $20 billion to address the ongoing border crisis under the Biden administration, and $14 billion for security assistance in Israel.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has stated that the bill would be "dead on arrival" in the House chamber.
"I’ve seen enough. This bill is even worse than we expected and won’t come close to ending the border catastrophe the President has created. As the lead Democrat negotiator proclaimed: Under this legislation, 'the border never closes.' If this bill reaches the House, it will be dead on arrival," Johnson wrote on X.
The bill states that if border crossings average 5,00 per day or more, then the Secretary of Homeland Security would use "emergency authority" to limit entry. This authority would also be used on any day "8,500 or more" border encounters occur. In addition, this emergency authority is not mandatory.
"If the President finds that it is in the national interest to temporarily suspend the border emergency authority, the President may direct the Secretary to suspend use of the border emergency authority on an emergency basis," the text adds.
If an emergency authority is in place, the government will still be able to process "a minimum of 1,400 inadmissible aliens each calendar day cumulatively across all southwest land border ports of entry in a safe and orderly process developed by the Secretary."
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