House leadership — Republicans and Democrats alike — are optimistic that the body will be able to pass an aid package for Israel in the coming days as the war against Hamas rages on. The question, though, is whether it will be included in a larger aid package that includes money for Ukraine and Free China. Multiple members tell the Sun that the latter should be the case. 

“I’m with Schumer and McConnell,” Congressman Steny Hoyer tells the Sun, referring to the Senate leaders who have both come out in defense of President Biden’s $106 billion supplemental budget request that includes money for Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan, and humanitarian aid to Gaza, as well as money for the southern border. “It needs to be one package,” the former Democratic majority leader adds. 

Moderate Republicans, too, believe that aid for Ukraine and Israel should be tied to southern border security funding in order to win the support of Democrats, even if more conservative members refuse to go along with the proposal. 

Congresswoman Jen Kiggans, who flipped a seat to the GOP last year and represents a district won by Mr. Biden in 2020, emphatically tells the Sun that any foreign aid must be paired with border funding to sweeten the deal for serious legislators on both sides of the aisle. “Israel-border security, Ukraine-border security, I don’t care if you do Israel and Ukraine and border security,” she says. 

Other members are waiting for the Senate to act on Mr. Biden’s funding request before the House can make its own changes or deals on foreign aid and border funding. “I’m still waiting to see what the Senate is going to send us,” Congressman Josh Gottheimer says. “We’re working on that,” the House majority leader, Congressman Steve Scalise, tells the Sun. 

The urgency of the Israel aid package increases by the day as the federal government runs out of money that Mr. Biden can send to the Jewish state. The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Congressman Mike McCaul, tells the Sun that while the president has more than $3 billion in “drawdown” funds to use, the House must pass additional aid, especially for a replenishing of the Iron Dome missile defense system. 

On Wednesday, the House overwhelmingly passed a resolution authored by Mr. McCaul and the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, Congressman Gregory Meeks, that affirmed the chamber’s support for the state of Israel and its right to defend itself. 

A few members — 16 in total — refused to vote for the measure, with 10 voting no and six voting present. The usual suspects were a part of that 16, including two members of the so-called Squad, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. 

One GOP member, Congressman Thomas Massie, also voted against the resolution. He explained on X that he is opposed to levying sanctions against Iran — as the resolution calls for — because that could be a prelude for war, and saying “it contains an open-ended promise of military support that is so broad that it could be interpreted to commit U.S. soldiers to the conflict. U.S. troops should not be engaged in this conflict.”