Congress faces 'existential moment' over $95 billion foreign aid bill: Dem representative

 Washington DC. - The Senate's $95 billion foreign aid package faces a tough challenge from House Republicans, but their Democratic counterparts say it is vital to preserving global democracy.

“Right now we are in the survival moment of global democracy and either the United States of America is standing up for freedom and democracy around the world or we are not, and we go back to hell and let autocrats, dictators, terrorists take over. The world,'' Representative Dan Goldman, Democrat of New York, told Fox News on Tuesday.

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A bipartisan group of placeholder senators passed the national security supplemental package after a long overnight session that ended Tuesday morning. The final vote was 70-29.

The massive foreign aid package comes as the national debt exceeds $34.2 trillion. It includes billions of dollars for Ukraine, Israel and other foreign partners, but leaves out any border security provisions, which Republicans have fought for since the White House originally proposed the supplemental funding package in October. Had requested.

Republicans also helped kill an earlier version of the bill that linked foreign aid to increased border staffing, faster deportations if migration levels exceed 5,000 on a seven-day rolling average and other measures .

"Border security was part of a package that was essentially vetoed by the fourth branch of the government, Donald Trump, who has led Speaker Johnson and MAGA elements in both the House and the Senate to kill it," Rep. Jamie Raskin told Fox News. Ordered."

"If Republicans really wanted to be a part of this and not just pay rhetoric, they would have adopted what the Senate was doing last week," the Maryland Democrat said.

But Republicans such as Representative Gary Palmer of Alabama said they oppose a cap on crossings of 5,000 people per day.

"What they're trying to do is give us a border package that will allow people to continue to come into the country at the rate that, frankly, during the Obama administration, the Secretary of Homeland Security did," Palmer said. Said." "Couldn't understand anything."

Customs and Border Protection sources told Fox News that more than 12,000 migrants were encountered in a single day in December, a new record. The surge of migrants has long overwhelmed border towns and is now putting pressure on cities across the country.

House Speaker Mike Johnson criticized the funding package, calling it "silence on the most serious issue facing our country."

"Now, in the absence of any border policy changes from the Senate, the House must continue to act on its own accord on these important matters," Johnson said in a statement late Monday. "America deserves better than the Senate status quo."

Raskin suggested that Democrats could use the discharge petition to sideline Johnson and bring the package to a vote in the House if necessary.

Goldman said the package aims to address three of America's adversaries that are "rapidly mobilizing themselves" – Iran, Russia and China.

The aid package allocates an additional $60 billion for Ukraine, bringing the total contribution of the United States to the country's fight against Russian aggression through February 2022 to more than $170 billion. It also includes $14 billion, about $5 billion, for Israel's fight against Hamas. Billions of dollars for allies in the Indo-Pacific region and $9 billion in humanitarian assistance for civilians in Ukraine, Gaza, and the West Bank.