WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders are hoping to muster a supplemental package to aid the war efforts in Ukraine and Israel, as well as make improvements to the U.S. immigration system, by the end of the year, according to multiple people involved in discussions.
The ambitious timeline would mean striking a deal that satisfies the funding requested by the Department of Defense to aid conflict zones, while simultaneously crafting an immigration package that not only provides resources for border security but includes a suite of policy changes to appease conservatives without alienating progressive Democrats.
The Republican-led House has already passed an aid bill for Israel, but it includes hefty cuts to the IRS and excludes humanitarian assistance — both items that the White House and Senate Democrats find untenable. The question is how the next stage of negotiations will proceed.
Senate leaders, both Republican and Democratic, believe the best path toward writing a piece of legislation that has a hope of passing both chambers and getting President Joe Biden’s signature would likely need to originate in the Senate, where there is room for bipartisan negotiation.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has made it clear that passing the supplemental aid would be a top priority for him in the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
“I know both sides genuinely care about approving aid to Israel and Ukraine and helping innocent civilians in Gaza,” Schumer said from the Senate floor Wednesday. “So I hope we can come to an agreement even if neither side gets everything they insist on. But it — we will be working on it immediately when we get back after Thanksgiving.”
But while Senate leaders are moving forward with their process, there is a group of conservative Republicans pushing the new House speaker, Mike Johnson, to pass a GOP-led bill in the House as a starting point for bicameral negotiations.
If the effort is successful, the House bill would be far more conservative than what might emerge in the Senate and could give hard-liners in the upper chamber more leverage in their negotiations over the final package.
“Johnson can’t make the Senate do the right thing,” Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., a Johnson ally, told NBC News. “But guess what? If they do their spending bills, if they’re going to be able to pass Ukraine aid with border security, if they do it with real benchmarks, I mean that makes it awfully difficult for senators to vote against it.”
Johnson has not yet said how he plans to handle the negotiations. But House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, who is a strong proponent of funding for Ukraine and Israel, has been in regular contact with the speaker on the supplemental aid, and he suggested in interviews last week that he expects the Senate to act first.
Four Senate sources directly connected to the negotiations told NBC News the window between Thanksgiving and Christmas is crucial, and that there is concern among both Republicans and Democrats that if the calendar slides into the New Year, the chances of getting all four planks of the plan — aid to Israel, Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific, and for border security — over the finish line reduces dramatically.
