President Joe Biden speaking on Wednesday in Arizona. Darryl Webb/AP
This weekend, President Joe Biden signed a $1.2 trillion spending bill to avert a potential government shutdown. The Senate passed the more than 1,000-page bill early Saturday morning, with 74 senators voting in favor and 24, mostly-Republican, senators voting against.
In a statement released by the White House on Saturday, Biden said that the “bipartisan funding bill I just signed keeps the government open, invests in the American people, and strengthens our economy and national security.” At the same time, he added, “This agreement represents a compromise, which means neither side got everything it wanted.”
The White House did not specify the tradeoffs. Republican priorities that made it into the bill include funding for 2,000 additional Border Patrol agents and money for additional detention beds for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Meanwhile, Biden said the measure expands “access to child care, invests in cancer research, funds mental health and substance use care.”
Some of the most controversial provisions relate to Israel and the ongoing war in Gaza. The bill blocks funding from going to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency—the most important organization serving Palestinian refugees in Gaza and throughout the region—until March 2025. The move comes after Israel alleged in January that a dozen UNRWA employees—less than 0.1 percent of its 13,000 workers in Gaza—had participated in the October 7 Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people. (About 100 hostages taken during the attack are believed to be alive in Gaza.)
After learning of the allegation from Israel, which has long tried to undermine UNRWA, the agency fired all of the surviving workers and opened an independent investigation that is ongoing. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who voted in favor of the spending bill, has been vocal in his support of UNRWA.
"If you look at the person who's in charge of operations on the ground in #Gaza for @UNRWA, it's about a 20-year (former) US Army veteran. You can be sure he's not in cahoots with Hamas"
Thanks @ChrisVanHollen 🙏@ScottAnderGaza pic.twitter.com/CV4DHWBenz
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) March 23, 2024
Nevertheless, Congress is blocking funding for the organization at a time when Gazans are on the brink of famine and children have died of starvation. The Foundation for Middle East Peace called this funding decision a “moral obscenity and will directly contribute to killing innocent people.”
In January, the Biden administration contributed to the backlash against UNRWA by temporarily suspending funds for the agency after learning about the Israeli allegations from UNRWA’s head Philippe Lazzarini. As I reported earlier this month:
In doing so, the administration imperiled the only organization capable of responding to the catastrophe caused by the Israeli assault: Scott Paul, a humanitarian policy expert at Oxfam, described the agency as the “backbone” of the response in Gaza and explained that up to 80 percent of aid to the area is dependent on it in some form. The organization has been feeding and sheltering more than 1 million people in Gaza.
The recently signed bill includes the 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 for Israel with the UNRWA funding ban led Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to vote against the bill. Sanders explained in a statement:
While hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children face starvation in Gaza, this bill actually prohibits funding to UNRWA, the key United Nations aid agency delivering life-saving humanitarian support. This will only intensify the already horrific situation in Gaza. This bill also provides another $3.3 billion in US military aid for Netanyahu’s right-wing government to continue this barbaric war. The Netanyahu government should not receive another penny from US taxpayers.
In the statement released by the White House, Biden called on Congress to pass the supplemental national security spending bill that is currently stalled in the House. That bill includes $60 billion in aid for Ukraine, $14 billion in additional security assistance for Israel, and $9 billion in humanitarian aid for Palestine, Ukraine, and other parts of the world.
The funds for Israel would be one of the largest military aid packages in US history, even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to ignore Biden by severely limiting the amount of aid allowed into Gaza and vowing to invade Rafah in spite of whether the US ultimately signs off on that operation. More than 1 million people are currently sheltering in Rafa, and according to the local health ministry, more than 32,000 people have been killed in Gaza—most of them women and children.
The military aid for Israel in the spending bill and the supplemental national security bill Biden supports come with no strings attached. In contrast, the spending bill contains long-standing provisions under which economic aid for Palestinians would be suspended if it obtains national recognition at the United Nations without Israeli permission, or if Palestinians initiate or support efforts to have Israelis prosecuted by the International Criminal Court.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called the spending bill “unconscionable” and voted against it. “The actions of Hamas should not be tied to whether a three-year-old can eat,” Ocasio-Cortez said Sunday on CNN. “The actions of Hamas do not justify forcing thousands—hundreds of thousands—of people to eat grass as their bodies consume themselves.”
