Senate OKs aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, deals blow to TikTok
The U.S. Senate voted Tuesday, 80 to 19, to advance a bipartisan funding package, setting aside $60 billion for Ukraine in its war against Russia, $8 billion to defend Taiwan and $26 billion to aid Israel and fund relief efforts in Gaza.
That $95 billion plan, approved by the House of Representatives on Saturday, will also put pressure on Chinese company ByteDance to sell the social media platform TikTok to a U.S.-based company or else face a nationwide ban.
President Biden is expected to sign that long-awaited legislation no later than Wednesday.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) praised Democrats and Republicans for working together through the past six months to finally advance the package sent to the Senate over the weekend. The Brooklyn native said the bipartisan agreement gives notice to the nation’s allies and adversaries that America supports fellow democracies.
“If [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is allowed to seize the territory of a neighboring sovereign nation, if the [Chinese Communist Party] is allowed to expand unchecked in the Indo-Pacific, if Iran is allowed to dominate in the Middle East, the U.S. will suffer the consequences,” Schumer wrote in a statement Tuesday posted to social media. “Today, we send a message — America will defend democracy.“
But not everyone was pleased with the foreign aid provisions in the supplement passed by the Senate.
“It is a dark day for democracy when the Senate will not even allow a vote on whether U.S. taxpayer dollars should fund [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s war against the Palestinian people,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, said after proposing an amendment to block “unfettered military aid” for Israel. The liberal lawmaker hoped to “cut billions in offensive military funding to Israel” from the supplemental package approved Tuesday.
Seventy senators voted in favor of a similar aid proposal in February, which did not include the TikTok stipulation that helped the legislation clear the House.
Democrats and Republicans expressed concern that TikTok could be used by the Chinese government to gather information about the social media app’s 170 million U.S. users.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, who’s from Singapore, used the platform last month to tell U.S. consumers his company would fight to maintain the status quo.
The platform has spent $5 million since last month on ads hoping to detour Congress from taking action against TikTok, according to The Associated Press. A company spokesman accused lawmakers of “using the cover of important foreign and humanitarian assistance” to push through legislation that TikTok said violates Americans’ “free speech rights.”
TikTok said it contributes $24 billion to the U.S. economy and is instrumental to many domestic businesses. An earlier version of the bill passed Tuesday aimed to give ByteDance a six-month deadline to sell the app to a U.S. company, though Biden could extend TikTok’s window to one year before otherwise facing a ban.