Tim Scott says he’d vote against Ukraine, Israel package in its ‘current construct’

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said Sunday he would vote against the White House’s emergency funding request for further aid to Ukraine and Israel in its “current construct,” arguing the package should be separated to allow for quicker aid to Israel as it fights against militant group Hamas.

Asked on ABC News’s “This Week,” if he will vote against the White House’s funding request, Scott said, “I will in the current construct, but there’s no doubt that we spent about — over the last two years — $100 billion to Ukraine and this one package is $61 billion for Ukraine, only $14 billion for Israel.”

“Israel is at the beginning of a long protracted war, I think we are much better off, better served as a nation, focusing our resources and our attention immediately on Israel and continuing to prove the kind of level of accountability and responsibility the American people want to see as it relates to the resources for Ukraine,” Scott continued.

The White House announced on Friday it would send a roughly $100 billion emergency funding request to Congress for additional money for border security, allies in the Indo-Pacific and for Israel and Ukraine for their respective conflicts against Hamas and Russia.

An estimated $61 billion of the request covers money for Ukraine, while $14 billion was allocated for Israel’s defense. Nearly $14 billion would cover personnel and operations at the U.S.-Mexico border, $10 billion would go towards humanitarian aid and $2 billion for Indo-Pacific security assistance.

Scott, who is also running in the Republican presidential primary, argued the Ukraine and Israel packages should be separated to allow for quicker passage and to provide more money to Israel, which has much broader support among Republicans then Ukraine.

“If we do those separately, I believe we get the Israel package done almost overnight, and then we have the longer process of proving more resources, depending on the level, to Ukraine,” Scott said, emphasizing the need to also address the U.S.-southern border.

“Thousands of people have crossed our southern border,” he said. “And on both sides of the aisle…one thing we can agree on is that the national security threat represented by an unsafe, unsecure and wide open border has never been higher than it is today.”

The package proposal comes nearly three weeks after Hamas, which the U.S. and other countries have recognized as a terrorist organization, carried out a massacre that killed more than 1,400 people in Israel, including hundreds of civilians in their homes, at a bus stop, and at a music festival.

Israeli forces quickly responded to the surprise assault with a bombardment of Gaza that has so far killed more than 4,600 Palestinians and injured over 14,000 others, the Gaza Ministry of Health reported Sunday.

The humanitarian crisis in Gaza deepened last week following Israel’s siege on food, water, electricity and medicine, forcing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out of their homes.

Israel ordered the evacuation of more than 1.1 million Palestinians over a week ago to travel to the southern half of the Gaza Strip last week ahead of an anticipated ground assault. However, many people in Gaza said Israel still attacked that portion of the enclave. Hamas has told residents not to leave and to stay in their homes.

President Biden visited Tel Aviv last week to meet with Israeli leaders and families impacted by the ongoing violence and reiterate the U.S.’s support for Jerusalem.

While there, Biden announced an agreement to allow humanitarian aid to move from Egypt to Gaza and confirmed the U.S. will fund $100 million to assist those living in Gaza and the West Bank. Trucks carrying aid have since entered into Gaza through the Rafah crossing — Gaza’s only connection to Egypt — which had shut down in the wake of Israeli airstrikes.

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