The lawmakers exceeded a simple majority threshold in a 66-33 vote to adopt the aid provisions as an amendment to legislation that could come to a final vote by Wednesday. They were also due to vote on Monday to limit debate on the legislation to 30 hours.
The measure cleared an important procedural hurdle a day earlier in a 67-27 vote, with the support of 18 of the chamber’s 49 Republicans.
“These are enormously high stakes of the national security package. Our security, our values, our democracy.
“It’s a downpayment for the survival of Western democracy and the survival of Western values,” Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said on Monday after rare back-to-back Saturday and Sunday Senate sessions to work on the bill.
“The entire world is going to remember what the Senate does in the next few days,” he said.
Democratic president Joe Biden has been urging Congress to hurry new aid to Ukraine and US partners in the Indo-Pacific, including Taiwan, for months. After Hamas’s Oct 7 attack on Israel, he also requested funds for the US ally, along with humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza.
Ukrainian officials have warned of weapons shortages at a time when Russia is pressing ahead with renewed attacks.
But to become law, the bill must pass the House as well as the Senate, and the House has not passed any major aid for Ukraine since Republicans took control of the chamber in January 2023.
House Speaker Mike Johnson indicated an unfriendly reception for the bill, saying in a statement that House Republicans wanted tight border security provisions to be included.
“Now, in the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters. America deserves better than the Senate’s status quo,” Johnson said in a statement.
Mayorkas impeachment
For months, Republicans had insisted that any additional aid to Israel and Ukraine must also address the high numbers of migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border.
But last week, at the urging of former president Donald Trump, most Senate Republicans voted to kill a bipartisan security bill that had been crafted over four months and was seen as the most significant border security and immigration reform effort in at least a decade.
The House instead this week is expected to try again to impeach Biden’s homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, the top official responsible for the border.
Schumer stripped the border security language from the bill last week.
Some Republican senators, including those most closely allied with Trump, have called for another overhaul of the bill.
Senator Lindsey Graham said portions of the US aid should be converted into loans and only “lethal aid,” not humanitarian aid, be included in the package. And he called for US border security provisions, although so far his party has not unveiled border-related amendments.