Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Urgent Need To Provide National Security Aid

Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor on the urgent need to provide aid to Ukraine, Israel, the South Pacific, and humanitarian assistance. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

Today, the House will keep working on national security supplemental funding. Yesterday the House released the legislative text, and I will continue to monitor closely what our House colleagues do in the coming days.

I hope President Biden will soon have on his desk long-awaited funding to support our friends in Ukraine, and Israel, and the Indo-Pacific, and aid for innocent civilians in need of humanitarian aid in Gaza and around the world. Senator Booker has told us stories about the starvation in Darfur and how much worse it would become if we don't get the aid. So, the time for House inaction has long been over.

Now, this afternoon, it will be my honor to meet with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, who is here to push for more funding for Ukraine.

I will tell the Prime Minister the same thing I told President Zelenskyy when I was in Ukraine about a month ago: America will not abandon you. Your cause is our cause. And we are working day and night to finally deliver to you the aid you need to defeat Vladimir Putin’s evil forces.

The one word to describe what the House needs right now is urgency - urgency. I remember, during my visit to Ukraine, standing in front of a cemetery in Lviv dedicated to the war dead. Not long before our visit, that gravesite was a parking lot in the middle of Lviv. But it was converted to a cemetery after the city ran out of space to bury casualties. And even as we stood there—even as we observed a moment of silence—a few yards away I could see workers digging even more holes in the ground, to prepare for the more casualties they knew would come.

Worst of all, many of these brave soldiers died because they didn’t have supplies and ammunition they needed.

I wish I could say the Ukraine war effort has not suffered due to American inaction, but that would not be true. As the Wall Street Journal noted yesterday: “Ukraine’s Chances of Pushing Russia Out Look Increasingly Grim.”

Why did they say that? Well, it’s because the House has continued to drag its feet in sending funding for ammo and air defenses and other basic supplies. I hope that changes at last in the coming days.

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