Majority of KS, MO Senators oppose Biden’s security bill
President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed into law a $95 billion spending package that will send military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. The new law will also force the sale of TikTok.
“It was a difficult path,” Biden said. “It should have been easier and it should have gotten there sooner,” Biden said at the White House after signing the bill. “But in the end we did what America always does. We rose to the moment, we came together and we got it done. Now we need to move fast.”
That path took nearly six months. As Republicans in Congress demanded reforms at the south western border, rejected a months-long bipartisan agreement on the border and then eventually cleared the aid packages alongside legislation to force the sale of TikTok.
Weapons could start arriving in Ukraine by the end of the week.
The Senate was able to pass the bill 79-18 on Tuesday night, giving final passage to the long-stalled legislation. The House passed its version of the legislation, which was split into four bills, on Saturday.
Sen. Jerry Moran, a
Kansas Republican, was the only senator from Kansas or Missouri who supported the package.
“There is no path forward for Ukraine, no path forward for Israel or for Taiwan, if the United States of America disengages in the world,” Moran said. “The price tag is significant. But in the absence of taking a stand now, we have to take a stand tomorrow. Do what we need to do today or pay a price later. And later will be even more costly.”
Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall and Missouri Sens. Eric Schmitt and Josh Hawley, have long stood in staunch opposition to additional Ukraine funding. All three are part of a younger, more populist wing of Senate conservatives, who have argued that the U.S. is sending too much money to Ukraine when it should be more focused on domestic issues.
“Missourians sent me to Washington to fight for them, not to just go along with the failed Washington way of doing things, like spending billions we don’t have to defend the Ukrainian border while nothing is done to secure our own border,” Schmitt said in a statement. “Moreover, there was no opportunity to properly amend this bill - that’s insane. It is time to put America’s strategic interests and the interests of the American people first.”
Schmitt opposed a bipartisan border agreement that was attached to an earlier version of the national security bill, as did Marshall and Hawley.
While the Senate conservatives helped kill the border security package — which Biden pledged to eventually revive — they were unable to block the final version of foreign aid.
Hawley, who has long voted against support for Ukraine, lamented that the final version of the bill didn’t include any money to reauthorize a program that provides federal support to people who were exposed to nuclear radiation from the country’s nuclear projects in the cold war. Hawley has pushed to get aid to people living in the St. Louis area.
But the bill does include something Hawley has long pushed for — a potential TikTok ban.
The TikTok provision was part of a larger package that also imposes sanctions on Russia and Iran. Rather than ban the social media app outright, it tries to force ByteDance, the Beijing-based company that owns the app, to sell it to someone outside of China. If it does not sell in about nine months, then the app would be banned — delaying a potential ban until 2025.
HOW THEY VOTED
Here’s how Kansas and Missouri senators voted on the national security aid bill. For the House votes, click here.
Kansas
Sen. Roger Marshall — No
Sen. Jerry Moran — Yes
Missouri
Sen. Josh Hawley — No Sen. Eric Schmitt — No
Daniel Desrochers: drdesrochers