The US House of Representatives will not vote on a bill submitted by the Senate to allocate additional funding for assistance to Ukraine and Israel, as well as to tighten control over the US-Mexico border. This was stated by the leader of the Republican majority in the lower house of Congress, Steve Scalise.

He motivated this by the fact that the measures proposed by the Senate to stabilize the migration crisis in the United States are unacceptable to Republicans.

“Let me be clear: the Senate border bill will not reach a vote in the House of Representatives. Those campaigning for this “deal” are silent about the fact that according to it it is planned to accept 5 thousand illegal immigrants per day and automatically issue asylum recipients with work permits. This is a magnet that will make the influx of illegal immigrants even stronger,” Scalise wrote on the social network X.

Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson expressed a similar position on the bill, which combines assistance to Kyiv, Israel and US border security.

“This bill is even worse than we expected. He will not come close to putting an end to the disaster on the border that the (current -

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) president created. As the chief negotiator on the Democratic side said, under the terms of this legislative initiative, “the border will never close.” If this bill reaches the House of Representatives, it will definitely fail,” said the Speaker of the House.

Experts interviewed by RT note that Republicans in the House of Representatives do not intend to agree with the proposals of the Joe Biden administration and the Senate to link assistance to Ukraine, Israel and the situation with the migration crisis in the United States.

“Their position has not changed since October 2023. Republican leaders of the House of Representatives initially stated that the inclusion of the White House request for assistance to Ukraine in the additional spending bill was absolutely unacceptable and that the majority in the House would be against it,” recalled Vladimir Batyuk, head of the Center for Military-Political Studies at the Institute of the United States and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

He stressed that, according to Republicans, the spending bill in this form misplaces US policy priorities.

“They are demanding a solution to the security problem of the southern border of the United States, through which there is a flow of illegal migrants, and the federal government and the Biden administration cannot, or rather does not want, to do anything about this. The White House wants to overcome the Republicans’ resistance to allocating aid to Kyiv, tying it to the issue of the migration crisis that is important to them,” Batyuk explained.

"Critical work"

The US Senate on February 4 introduced an emergency spending bill worth $118.2 billion, which involves the allocation of military and financial assistance to Ukraine and Israel, as well as funds to strengthen the security of the US-Mexico border and combat illegal immigration.

Of the total amount of $118.2 billion, it is proposed to allocate $60.1 billion to help Ukraine, $14.1 billion to Israel and $20.2 billion to strengthen the US southern border. In addition, $4.8 billion is planned to be allocated for activities in the Indo-Pacific region and another $10 billion for humanitarian projects, including in Gaza, the West Bank and Ukraine.

  • Speaker of the House Mike Johnson

  • AP

  • © Mark Schiefelbein

After the bill was unveiled, the White House issued a statement on behalf of Joe Biden, in which the American leader called on parliamentarians to approve the document.

“This (agreement -

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) allows the United States to continue our critical work, working together with our partners around the world, to defend the freedom of Ukraine... As I said, if we do not discourage Putin’s appetite for power and control in Ukraine , it will not be limited to this alone, and America will have to bear higher costs,” the White House press service quotes the president as saying.

Let us recall that the Biden administration has been unsuccessfully trying since the fall of 2023 to pass through Congress a bill to allocate more than $60 billion in aid to Ukraine. That initiative, as well as a proposal to give more than $14 billion to Israel, met resistance in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

Congressmen, in response to linking assistance to Ukraine with other additional budget expenditures, demanded that the Biden administration and Democrats tighten immigration policies and allocate more funds to strengthen the southern border of the United States.

At the end of December 2023, Washington allocated the latest aid package to Ukraine for $250 million. On January 11, White House national security coordinator John Kirby announced that the United States had stopped supplying weapons and military equipment to Ukraine due to the exhaustion of funds from Congress for these purposes.

Later, on January 31, Kirby said that the United States has no alternative to military support for the Kyiv regime without congressional approval of a spending bill that includes the Biden administration's request for financial assistance for Ukraine. He added that the White House needs exactly the requested amount ($60.1 billion), since it was formed specifically for the needs of Kyiv.

Increased pressure

Commenting on the situation, Pavel Feldman, associate professor at the Academy of Labor and Social Relations, noted that until the new presidential elections in the United States in November 2024, the issue of approving aid to Ukraine, Israel and allocating funds to combat the migration crisis may not be resolved.

  • Meeting of the US Congress

  • AP

  • © J. Scott Applewhite

“US domestic policy is now a tangle of contradictions that will not be untangled until the presidential elections. US foreign allies have unwittingly become bargaining chips in the game between Biden and Trump. Republicans understand that the White House needs their votes to approve military and financial assistance to Ukraine. However, in return, they demand consent to allocate funds to fight migrants, knowing full well that such a decision is completely contrary to the ideology and values ​​of the US Democratic Party,” the political scientist explained in a conversation with RT.

Republicans in Congress have caught the Biden administration in a trap, believes Pavel Feldman.

“In the future, they will only increase pressure, sensing the enemy’s weakness. So the question of providing assistance to Kyiv may hang in the air for several months, and in the meantime, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are already experiencing a critical shortage of ammunition. If Democrats end up agreeing to a budget that includes tough measures against illegal immigrants, they will lose part of their electorate, which is largely Latino. This will be a blow to Biden’s electoral positions on the eve of the presidential elections,” the expert emphasized.

According to Konstantin Blokhin, an employee of the Center for Security Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Washington will not leave the Ukrainian side completely without help, and now there is behind-the-scenes bargaining on this issue between various camps of the American establishment.

“There are no agreements yet: behind-the-scenes negotiations are underway at the level of the House of Representatives and in the Senate. The White House understands the essence of the contradictions and therefore attaches to this bill, in addition to strengthening the border, Israel - this is a sacred ally for the Republicans, which they cannot leave without help. This is such a trick,” explained RT’s interlocutor.

However, congressmen made it clear that they do not accept such tricks, Blokhin added.

“It is still difficult to say for sure how this confrontation will end. But one should not expect that under the Biden administration the United States will simply abandon support for Ukraine. It may be limited and reduced, but it is unlikely to be completely abolished. Most likely, Washington will try to temporarily shift the main costs of supplying Kyiv to its allies in European countries,” the expert concluded.