Supplemental Funding

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Now, Mr. President, on the business of today, today the Senate Appropriations Committee hears testimony from the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State on President Biden's emergency supplemental request, sent to Congress to address the national security threats happening around the world.

The right path forward for Congress is clear. We must stand with our allies in Israel; we must send humanitarian aid to innocent civilians in Gaza; we must give aid to Ukraine and hold the line against Vladimir Putin; and we must rebuff the aggressions of the Chinese Communist Party in the Indo-Pacific.

As has been true from the start of this Congress, bipartisan cooperation will be the only way anything gets to the President's desk.

So I am deeply troubled that yesterday, House Republicans released a partisan and woefully inadequate package with no aid to Ukraine, no humanitarian assistance for Gaza, no funding for the Indo-Pacific, and, in addition, poison pills that increase the deficit and help wealthy tax cheats avoid paying their fair share.

The House GOP bill is woefully inadequate and has the hard right's fingerprints all over it. It makes aid for Israel, which has just faced the worst terrorist attack in its history, contingent on poison pills that reward rich tax cheats. In short, it makes it much, much harder to pass aid for Israel.

It is insulting that the hard right is openly trying to exploit the crisis in Israel to try and reward the ultrarich. The new Speaker knows perfectly well that if you want to help Israel, you can't propose legislation that is full of poison pills. And this kind of unnecessary partisan legislation sends the wrong message to our allies and adversaries around the world.

It is almost as if the real goal of this House GOP package is not to help Israel but to get tax relief for the superwealthy, while leaving out Ukraine aid, leaving out humanitarian aid for Gaza, leaving out funding for the Indo-Pacific.

Instead of advancing a serious proposal to defend Israel, defend Ukraine, and provide humanitarian aid, this House GOP proposal is clearly designed to divide Congress on a partisan basis, not unite it. The Speaker's allies have said as much to the press. I hope the new Speaker realizes that this is a grave mistake and quickly changes course. To protect Americans against any one of these foreign threats, we must protect against them all, because you can be sure that President Xi will watch what America does in Ukraine, just as much as they watch what we do in Israel, in the Indo Pacific, and everywhere else. And the last thing Republicans in Congress should be doing is exploiting the crisis in Israel to sneak in a highly partisan provision that caters to the ultrarich, as the GOP package blatantly does.

As I mentioned when I spoke to Speaker Johnson the night of his election, the only way we will get anything done is in a bipartisan way. Unfortunately, in his first major decision as Speaker, Speaker Johnson has ignored that advice.

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