President Joe Biden speaks in Arizona on Wednesday. Darryl Webb/Associated Press
this weekend, President Joe Biden signed a $1.2 trillion spending bill to avert a possible government shutdown. The Senate passed the more than 1,000-page bill early Saturday morning, with 74 senators voting yes and 24 mostly Republican senators voting no.
In a statement released by the White House on Saturday, Biden said: “The bipartisan funding bill I just signed will keep our government functioning, invest in Americans, and strengthen our economy and national security. It's a thing,” he said. At the same time, he added, “this agreement represented a compromise, meaning neither side got everything it wanted.”
The White House did not specify the tradeoffs. Republican priorities included in the bill include funding for 2,000 additional Border Patrol agents and additional Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention beds. Meanwhile, Biden said the measure would expand “access to child care, investment in cancer research, and funding for mental health and substance use care.”
Some of the most controversial provisions relate to the ongoing war between Israel and Gaza. The bill blocks funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the most important agency serving Palestinian refugees in Gaza and across the region, until March 2025. The move comes after Israel claimed more than a dozen (less than 0.1) UNRWA employees in January. Some of Gaza's 13,000 employees took part in the October 7 Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people. (About 100 hostages captured during the attack are believed to be alive in Gaza.)
Upon learning of the accusations from Israel, which had long sought to undermine UNRWA, the agency fired all surviving staff and launched an independent investigation, which is currently underway. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who voted in favor of the spending bill, has been vocal in his support for UNRWA.
“If you look at the operational leaders on the ground, #Gaza for @UNRWA, a 20-year (former) U.S. Army veteran. You can be sure he's not colluding with Hamas.”
thank you @ChrisVanHollen 🙏@ScottAnderGaza pic.twitter.com/CV4DHWBenz
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) March 23, 2024
Yet Congress has blocked funding to the organization at a time when Gazans are on the brink of starvation and children are starving to death. The Middle East Peace Foundation said the funding decision was “a moral obscenity and would directly contribute to the killing of innocent people.”
The Biden administration temporarily suspended funding to UNRWA in January after being informed of the Israeli allegations by UNRWA Director Philippe Lazzarini, contributing to the backlash against UNRWA. As I reported earlier this month,
In doing so, the regime jeopardized the only organization capable of responding to the catastrophe caused by an Israeli attack. Scott Paul, Oxfam's humanitarian policy expert, described the agency as “the backbone” of the response in Gaza, explaining what has been going on so far. Eighty percent of aid to this region depends in some way on this region. The organization has fed and sheltered more than 1 million people in the Gaza Strip.
The recently signed bill includes more than $3 billion in military aid that the United States has provided to Israel on an annual basis for years. The combination of military aid to Israel and a ban on UNRWA funding led Sen. Bernie Sanders (R-Vt.) to vote against the bill. Sanders explained in his statement:
While hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children face starvation in Gaza, the bill would actually ban funding to UNRWA, the main UN aid agency that provides lifesaving humanitarian aid. There is. This will only worsen the already dire situation in Gaza. The bill also provides an additional $3.3 billion in U.S. military aid to Prime Minister Netanyahu's right-wing government to continue this brutal war. Netanyahu's government should not receive a penny more from American taxpayers.
In a statement released by the White House, Mr. Biden called on Congress to pass the national security spending bill, which is currently stalled in the House of Representatives. The bill includes $60 billion in aid to Ukraine, $14 billion in additional security assistance to Israel, and $9 billion in humanitarian aid to Palestine, Ukraine and other parts of the world.
Funding for Israel continues to defy Biden, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu severely limiting the amount of aid to Gaza and vowing to invade Rafah, regardless of whether the US ultimately signs on. Nevertheless, it would be one of the largest military aid packages in U.S. history. That operation turns it off. More than 1 million people are currently displaced in Rafah, and more than 32,000 people have been killed in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the local health ministry.
Military aid to Israel in the spending bill and the national security supplement bill supported by Biden have no strings attached. By contrast, the spending bill includes financial aid to Palestinians if they receive state recognition at the United Nations without Israel's permission or if they initiate or support efforts to have Israelis prosecuted in the International Criminal Court. It includes a long-standing provision that the
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York voted against the spending bill, calling it “unconscionable.” “Hamas' actions should not be tied to whether a 3-year-old can eat or not,” Ocasio-Cortez said on CNN on Sunday. She said: “Hamas' actions do not justify forcing thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people to eat grass to the point of depletion.”
