Congress should vote separately, but rapidly, on Israel, Ukraine, and the border
Quin Hillyer
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There is no good, substantive reason for the Senate to insist on bundling aid to Israel with aid to Ukraine and with Mexican border security. Then again, there is no excuse for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to avoid giving Ukrainian aid a prompt, fair vote on the House floor.
And “prompt,” by the way, means within the next week.
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If Johnson does not allow a stand-alone vote on Ukrainian aid, with no “poison pill” provisions or gimmicks, then the Senate would have good reason to insist on rebundling all three items. The point of separating the provisions is to allow each one to stand on its merits. If Johnson instead separates them in order to block the merits of one item from even being voted on, then he would be the one acting unreasonably, and against the national interest.
There’s a lot to unpack here.
Start with this: One of Congress’s most pernicious practices is to push mammoth bills as all-or-nothing packages, forcing individual members to vote for some items they fervently oppose as the price for approving items they fervently desire. While some legislative horse-trading along these lines is to be expected, Congress, for decades, has gone too far. Especially for controversial, big-ticket items, the public deserves separate votes so that majority sentiment, pro or con, can prevail in each case, rather than projects or policy being held hostage for entirely unrelated initiatives.
If a big-ticket item can’t get majority support in both chambers of Congress, it shouldn’t pass. But one that does enjoy majority support absolutely should pass, rather than fail because something else less popular is appended to it.
Granted, both the House and (especially) the Senate have complicated procedural rules that can make votes on individual items unwieldy and time-consuming. The Senate filibuster in particular can be abused to bring legislative action to a standstill. Nonetheless, and without getting into procedural weeds, the simple fact is there are ways to suspend rules or to short-circuit dilatory tactics. In the name of the common good, with agreement by supermajorities pushed by each chamber’s leadership, there’s no reason agreement can’t be reached to expedite consideration of major matters one by one. None.
Procedural problems aside, there is an ethical imperative to bring to a vote each of the three issues of border security, aid to Ukraine, and aid to Israel. On the latter two, only people with severely skewed moral compasses would disagree that Ukraine and Israel both are victims of heinous and unprovoked atrocities and that each’s defense is a righteous cause. (If you disagree, stop reading: This isn’t the place to convince you how egregiously wrong you are.) The only questions are whether those righteous causes merit material support from the United States, and if so, how much.
Hamas is evil. Vladimir Putin is evil. Undeniably. When the questions are whether and how materially to help Israel and Ukraine fight against these respective evils, not a single member of Congress should stand in the way, or be allowed to stand in the way, of a majority of the public’s duly elected delegates deciding those questions.
Likewise, with cartel-smuggled fentanyl pouring across the Mexican border (along with criminals and potential terrorists), and with a humanitarian crisis of women and children who illegally cross the border only to find no decent housing facilities here, it would be dreadful to keep legislative majorities from a fair, stand-alone vote on how to strengthen border security, without regard to decisions on Ukraine or Israel.
None of which should foreordain the outcome of votes on each of these three subjects. It is just to say that on each, a majority should rule, and should do so expeditiously, because crises don’t wait for partisan posturing.
Unforgivably, House Republicans, Senate Democrats, and President Joe Biden are each subjugating these pressing national questions in favor of political gamesmanship. Each is angling to see how their political opponents can be “put on the spot” by forcing them to vote in uncomfortable ways that can be used against them in coming election campaigns.
When pure evil is rampaging abroad and when our own border is suffering a humanitarian and national security crisis, such political calculations are morally repugnant.
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So, everyone should stop the political foofaraw. Vote on border security. Vote on aid for Israel. Vote on aid to Ukraine. Do it one by one, but within one week. And then vote separately on ideas for savings to “pay for” each. That’s what decent people do when confronted with true moral imperatives: Meet the imperative first, and then go back to cover the costs.
Stop playing politics. Dammit, get it done.