Lawmakers unveil bipartisan bill combining Ukraine aid and border security 

A bipartisan group of moderate House lawmakers unveiled an emergency funding bill Friday that includes aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan in addition to border security policy, as centrists seek another option for helping U.S. allies after Republicans threw cold water on the foreign aid package passed by the Senate earlier in the week.

The proposal is designed to break the months-long impasse over military aid for Kyiv — amid warnings that Ukrainian forces are running low on weapon supplies — by marrying it to the tougher border security measures demanded by House conservatives and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who has refused to stage a vote on the Senate-passed bill.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), who helped negotiate the package, said he would have voted for the $95 billion Senate bill, which won the support of 70 senators, including 22 Republicans. But he acknowledged that Johnson is facing difficult terrain in the House, and he offered his proposal as the compromise that could end the long stalemate. 

“The Speaker’s got to manage the conference. He’s doing the best he can to do,” Fitzpatrick said.

“But I also think it’s incumbent upon members that, if there’s not successful progress on time-sensitive existential matters, that we do what we have to do to protect our country,” he told reporters Thursday at the Capitol. 

“That’s why we’re dropping this bill. It’s the only bipartisan bill on the border and Ukraine in the House.”

The bill has virtually no chance of passing through either chamber. 

Not only are conservatives sure to balk at the absence of the many border security measures included in the House-passed GOP bill, known as H.R. 2, but Democrats are certain to oppose both the “remain in Mexico” provision and the exclusion of humanitarian aid for Gaza, Ukraine and other global hotspots. 

Even before the centrist’s alternative bill was introduced Friday, Democratic leaders were already indicating they would oppose it, urging Johnson instead to take up the bipartisan legislation that has already passed through the Senate.

“This is clear. Mike Johnson simply needs to put the bipartisan national security bill on the House floor for an up-or-down vote, and it will pass,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday. “That’s it.”

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), the senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, delivered a similar warning.

“We’ve got a bill; it’s got bipartisan support in the Senate. It ought to be sent up here for a vote. … And you know what? It would pass overwhelmingly,” she said.

But the introduction of the measure will, nonetheless, up the pressure on Johnson to move on assistance for Kyiv, especially as the two-year mark of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches.

The legislation — dubbed the Defending Borders, Defending Democracies Act — would allocate $66.32 billion to the Defense Department to support embattled nations, including roughly $47 billion for Ukraine, $10 billion for Israel, $5 billion for the Indo-Pacific and $2 billion to support operations in the U.S. Central Command.

The border portion of the bill would resurrect the “Remain in Mexico” policy for one year, which requires that migrants looking to enter the U.S., including through asylum, are required to return to the country they left as proceedings are underway in the U.S.

The bipartisan measure would also require that the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, for one year, suspend entry of inadmissible migrants at the border if they determine that is necessary to achieve operational control of the border. And it calls for the detention and expulsion to Mexico without a hearing or review of migrants who arrive in the U.S. from the southern border and are deemed inadmissible.

Fitzpatrick, one of the lead sponsors of the legislation and a co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, spoke to the interconnectedness of addressing the situation at the border and helping U.S. allies abroad.

“Securing one’s borders is necessary to preserving one’s democracy and, therefore, necessary to maintaining world order and world peace,” Fitzpatrick said in a statement. “As the world’s oldest and strongest democracy, the United States’ primary responsibility must be to secure its own borders. But we also have an obligation to assist our allies in securing their borders, especially when they come under assault by dictators, terrorists, and totalitarians.”

“Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan are all freedom-loving democracies, they are our allies, and we must assist them in protecting their borders just as we must protect our own,” he continued. “We can, and must, achieve all of the above.”

Fitzpatrick sponsored the bill with Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine), Don Bacon (R-Neb.), Ed Case (D-Hawaii), Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.), Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.) and Jim Costa (D-Calif.).

The bipartisan foreign-aid-plus-border-security bill is the latest development in the saga over supplemental funding, which has bedeviled lawmakers for months.

The White House unveiled a roughly $100 billion supplemental package in October that included funding for Ukraine, Israel, Indo-Pacific allies and the border. But Republicans balked at the ask, demanding that any aid for Kyiv be paired with substantive border security policy.

That posture launched a bipartisan group of senators to engage in talks over border security which, after roughly four months, led to a deal that was endorsed by the National Border Patrol Council. But Republicans blocked that agreement from advancing, with conservatives arguing that it would not help solve problems at the southern border.

The Senate then moved forward with the foreign aid provisions of the supplemental, minus the border security agreement, which cleared the chamber in a bipartisan 70-29 vote. Johnson, however, said the chamber “failed to meet the moment” with the legislation, harping on its exclusion of border security policy.

The bipartisan group of House centrists is now making its own attempt at pairing border security with foreign aid.