Feb. 3 (UPI) — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Thursday that the Senate will vote next week on a bill funding the war in Ukraine and addressing border security.
Schumer said he plans to introduce the bill this weekend and schedule the first vote for Wednesday, giving senators a chance to pass it before they leave for the President’s Day recess.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, however, argued having less than a week to study the bill is “unacceptable.”
“They’ve had months to write it — in complete secrecy, no less,” he said. “A few days won’t be nearly enough to read, debate and amend this thing.”
Lee has proposed giving senators at least three weeks to consider the bill, arguing immigration law is extremely complex.
Schumer said he picked the time frame to “give members plenty of time to read the bill before voting on it.”
Schumer pleaded with Republicans to vote for the controversial bill, as it is “so important to enabling us to address multiple crises around the globe.”
He cited Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza and China’s threatening of the Indo-Pacific region as causes to support the bill.
The bill includes aid for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, as well as border security funding and money for implementing new border policies.
Those policies include mandatory border shutdown authority if daily crossings go above 5,000 people a day, asylum reforms, expedited processing and ending the catch and release of migrants.
The GOP has demanded more funding for border security in exchange for supporting further aid to Ukraine. Partisan negotiations over border policy changes have delayed the bill for four months.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., the lead Democratic negotiator, said in a post on X that it’s finally time for the legislation to come to the floor.
“We have a bipartisan deal to address the crisis at the border. It should be no surprise that Donald Trump opposes the agreement — he wants chaos at the border because it helps him politically. It’s time to bring this deal to the floor,” the post read.
Lead Republican negotiator Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma said the timeline should give legislators enough time to study the border security deal.
“It depends on the level of staffing that they have. Do they have people that are knowledgeable on these issues? If they do, they can read through it pretty quickly,” he said.
