Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On House Republicans’ Unserious And Woefully Inadequate Aid Package

Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor on the hyper-partisan and deeply inadequate aid package proposed by the House GOP and said that the Senate will work on its own aid package that meets our national security needs. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

Today, the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on the GOP’s unserious and woefully inadequate aid package.

By now, it’s glaringly apparent that the House aid package is even worse than what people originally thought, because yesterday the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported the House Republican package will add over $12 billion to the budget deficit.

Now, Speaker Johnson said he wanted to pay for it. He insists that emergency funding for Israel has to be paid for, when we usually don’t pay for emergency funding. But the hypocrisy here is that by cutting funding to go after tax cheats, he will actually explode the deficit by billions and billions of dollars. What a joke.

I am glad that the President issued a veto threat over this stunningly unserious proposal, unserious at a time of crisis like this, from the House GOP Leader. 

The Senate will not be considering this deeply flawed proposal from the House GOP, and instead we will work together on our own bipartisan emergency aid package that includes aid to Israel, Ukraine, competition with the Chinese government, and humanitarian aid for Gaza.

Let me say that again: the Senate will not take up the House GOP’s deeply flawed proposal and instead will work on our own bipartisan emergency aid package that includes aid to Israel, Ukraine, competition with the Chinese government, and humanitarian aid for Gaza.

It still mystifies me that at a moment when the world is in crisis – at a time when we need to help Israel to respond to Hamas – the House GOP thought it was a good idea to tie Israel aid to a hard right proposal that will raise the deficit and is totally, totally partisan, all the while helping wealthy tax cheats get away scot free. Why would they make support for Israel conditional on this hard right giveaway to the wealthy? It’s truly astounding, and it shows you how weak and unserious – and what a joke, frankly – the House GOP proposal is.

And don’t just take it from me, folks: the Republican Vice Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee had this to say about the House GOP bill, and he’s a member of the House GOP, he said quote:

“I think it was intellectually lazy…It’s a little hard to have, ‘I care about debt,’ and then at the same time move something as your pay-for that actually will have a multiplier of raising the debt.”

That’s a top Republican saying this House Republican proposal will “actually will have a multiplier of raising the debt.”

I really regret that the House Speaker has chosen this as his first major legislative step. When he and I spoke the night he was elected, I said let's work together in a bipartisan way. And I reminded him that things only get done if you work in a bipartisan way. Speaker Boehner, Speaker Ryan, Speaker McCarthy had to learn that lesson the hard way. I hope the Republican Leader will examine what he has done and change course and work in a bipartisan way to help fund these necessary items for Israel, Ukraine, Gaza and the South Pacific, and the South China Sea.

The right way forward is something very different from what the House GOP is pushing: we need to stand with Israel, we need to provide swift humanitarian aid for Gaza, we need to help Ukraine, which desperately and immediately needs the help, and we need to stay one step ahead of the Chinese government.

The Senate will work on our own emergency aid package, not the one proposed by House Republicans.

###