The White House announced Friday a $106 billion security package to fund key foreign and domestic policy fronts, hours after Joe Biden delivered a speech to the nation Thursday night in which he called for of support and finance to Israel and Ukraine.
The US president described support for his allies in the face of Russia’s invasion and terrorist attacks by Hamas as a matter of “vital US national security” and argued that both conflicts are complex and threaten the US . .USA: “Hamas and Putin represent different threats, but they have one thing in common: they both seek the total annihilation of a neighboring democracy.”
The Biden Administration provided details of the security package on Friday, which has a higher cost than the president’s Democratic allies in Congress had expected. This includes $61 billion for Ukraine – the estimated amount of aid for the entire year 2024 – and $14 billion for Israel. In addition, it provides another 7 billion to cover China, 10 billion for humanitarian aid in all these conflicts and 14 billion to improve the security of the southern border of the US.
Biden’s idea is to group these things into an appropriation of funds to force Republicans to continue funding the war in Ukraine, something that has little support among conservative voters.
Internecine wars
But before his political opponents can be convinced, Biden needs Republicans to resolve their internal conflicts. Any legislative proposal in this regard must go through the House of Representatives, one of the two bodies of Congress, and is paralyzed by the absence of a speaker, a president, due to internal battles in the Republican caucus.
At the beginning of the month, a revolt by extremist deputies ousted the man who had been president since the Republicans won a majority in last year’s legislative elections, Kevin McCarthy, and more than two weeks later they were without able to combine a candidate.
This Friday, Trump’s candidate for office, Jim Jordan, failed for the third time in a ‘plenary’ vote in the House, where the division of his parliamentary group was once again shown and the uncertainty remains about the establishment of a new ‘speaker’, without which the body cannot develop or approve the law.
After the vote, Republicans held a closed-door meeting to vote on whether Jordan should remain as speaker candidate and decided against it. After that decision, it is unclear who the next candidate will be or when the Republican caucus will meet to nominate him.
Biden followed these events in Congress while holding the second US-European Union summit, with a visit to the White House by the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the president of the European Council, Charles Michel. On the agenda, transatlantic unity of support for Ukraine and Israel and the tariff war between the leading powers of the world and the European Union, which is still alive and where, at the time of this edition, no new agreement has been reached oh
Strong support for Ukraine
“Developments in the Middle East must not distract us from our steadfast support for Ukraine,” von der Leyen said at the start of the summit. The European president recalled that the bloc has currently provided 90 billion euros to the Ukrainian cause, including military support, humanitarian aid and the reception of four million refugees. The EU intends to deliver another 50 billion in the next few years but, like the US, the increasing boredom of the financing of the kyiv Government has opened cracks between the European partners. “Democracies must remain united,” he declared.
“Today the world is facing great challenges,” said Michel. “And, more than ever, the world needs a strong US-EU alliance to meet these challenges.”
