White House press Secretary Karin Jean-Pierre recalled that the US president made it clear that he would use the right of veto in relation to such a bill.
WASHINGTON, November 3. /tass/. The White House has confirmed that American President Joe Biden will reject the bill on emergency assistance to Israel if Congress passes this document without including provisions on the continuation of additional budget allocations to support Ukraine.
"As for the bill on assistance to Israel prepared by the Republican Party, the president made it very clear: <...> the president would use the right of veto against him. We have made this very clear," White House spokeswoman Karin Jean-Pierre said. She spoke at a briefing on board Biden's plane, which traveled from Washington to Lewiston (Maine), where 18 people were killed and 13 others were injured as a result of the shooting on October 25.
At the same time, Jean-Pierre claimed that "there is bipartisan support" for the bill on the emergency allocation of additional funding for national security needs in the form in which this document was previously sent to Capitol Hill by the White House. Meanwhile, on Thursday, the House of Representatives approved a bill to allocate additional aid in the amount of $14.3 billion to Israel alone.
The press secretary of the American leader refused to clarify whether the executive branch of the US government is satisfied with the proposal of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican Mike Johnson, to try to adopt a multi-stage model for continuing to finance the activities of the federal government, which provides for the approval of individual bills for almost every major department. Such funding is provided by the adoption of a single budget resolution by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the Congress. "It's up to them [legislators] to decide. They have to do their job. They have less than two weeks left [to adopt budget documents and prevent the suspension of the work of the federal government]," the White House spokeswoman said. "We will not interfere, we will not say what it should look like. There should not be such a thing that the House of Representatives under Republican control leads us to this potential crisis," Jean-Pierre added.
She was referring to the fact that the compromise bill on continuing to finance the work of the federal government, adopted earlier by Congress and signed by Biden, expires on November 17.
On Monday, the Republicans of the lower house of Congress presented a bill on additional budget allocations, in which there is no support for Ukraine, and it is proposed to finance aid to Israel by reducing funds allocated to the US Internal Revenue Service (federal tax agency). The White House warned a short time later that Biden would use the right of veto against this Republican bill. Despite this threat, the document was adopted by a majority vote in the House of Representatives on Thursday evening.
In October, the US administration sent a request to Capitol Hill for additional large budget allocations in the fiscal year that began in the US on October 1, 2024, primarily for assistance to Ukraine and Israel, as well as for countering China and Russia in the Asia-Pacific region. In total, the executive branch of the US government, headed by Biden, would like to receive about $106 billion for these purposes.
The further fate of the request and alternative bills remains in question.
A lot of Republicans in both the House of Representatives and the Senate of Congress have publicly spoken out recently against continuing to provide financial assistance to Kiev.
