A day after the Senate passed it, President Joe Biden (D) on Wednesday signed a $95-billion foreign aid bill that includes funds to help the National Nuclear Security Administration monitor radiological threats in war-torn Ukraine.
The bill easily passed the Senate 79-18 on Tuesday. It was a modified piece of Senate legislation that the House passed Saturday, more than two months after the upper chamber first approved it.
Broadly, the bill includes military aid for Ukraine and Israel, plus defense funds to counter Chinese activity in the Indo-Pacific region. The House sat on the bill because of resistance to Ukraine aid from some members of the right wing of the chamber’s now-one-seat Republican majority.
To appease the hardliners, Speaker of the House Rep. Michael Johnson (R-La.) split the Senate’s bill into three separate House bills. Johnson said this would allow members to support or oppose any of the three major pillars of the foreign aid proposal.
Johnson then rolled up the three bills, with added sanctions for Iran and a measure that could result in the banning of the video-sharing app Tik Tok, and sent the package back to the Senate.
Ukraine aid makes up about two thirds of the $95-billion bill the Senate just approved.
Within the total is about $150 million for the National Nuclear Security Administration, including some $144 million for the agency’s Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation plus about $5.5 million for Federal Salaries and Expenses to pay staff to monitor Russian-occupied power plants in Ukraine.
The Russian Federation in 2022 invaded Ukraine for the second time this century, claiming, among other reasons, that it was doing so to protect ethnic Russians from Ukraine’s government.
Editor’s note, April 24, 2024, 3:57 p.m. Eastern time. The story was updated to show that President Joe Biden (D) signed the bill.
