Senate Border Deal and Foreign Aid Package Fails: What's Next

A vote to pass a bipartisan border deal failed in the U.S. Senate after receiving backlash from Republicans.

After months of negotiating, a group of Senate Republicans and Democrats released a $118 billion aid package, including $20 billion for securing the U.S.-Mexico border, immigration policy changes, and aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

The Senate failed to meet the 60 votes needed for the bill to advance within the Senate. If the bill passed in the Senate, it would eventually have gone to the House. The final vote was 50-49 against.

Republican House leaders made it clear in the weeks before the vote that they would reject the legislation. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said that the border deal would be "dead on arrival."

Former President Donald Trump, GOP front-runner in the 2024 presidential race, urged Congress not to pass the bill, calling the deal a "horrible open borders betrayal of America," at a rally in Las Vegas. Critics said that Trump wanted to kill the bill so he could continue campaigning on the border strife.

President Joe Biden, who supported the bill, said during a White House speech on Tuesday that Trump would "rather weaponize this issue than actually solve it."

The Senate will now hold a vote to begin debating a deal solely focused on foreign aid.

Biden initially requested a $105 billion supplemental aid package from Congress in October to help Ukraine fend off Russia's invasion, and aid Israel in its war with Hamas in Gaza. The package also included around $14 billion for border security, but Republicans in Congress blocked it, demanding immigration policy changes in addition to border funding.

The new deal includes $60.1 billion in military aid for Ukraine, $14.1 billion in security assistance for Israel, $10 billion in humanitarian help and $4.8 billion for the Indo-Pacific region.

Johnson had pushed for a $17.6 billion standalone funding bill for Israel, which failed on Tuesday.

He posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday after the failed Senate bill vote, writing, "Last night, 166 House Democrats voted against a clean, standalone Israel aid package. There is no reason for them to object to this legislation. They're doing it for political reasons. This was a shameful act when our ally Israel needs our help."

Biden said during a closed-door fundraiser in New York City on Wednesday after the border deal failed that he'd "never thought I'd see something like we are seeing now," according to CNN.

Republicans are "walking away because they've got Donald Trump calling and threatening them," the president said.

When confronted Sunday by NBC's Kristen Welker on Meet the Press, Johnson said that Trump is "not calling the shots."

Newsweek reached out to the White House, Trump's campaign and Johnson's office via email for comment on Wednesday.

Senator Chris Murphy, Connecticut Democrat and key negotiator on the border deal, told NBC News after the failed border vote: "This is the most outrageous thing that I have been a part of in my 16 years in Congress ... We've learned that Trump is fully and completely in charge of the party, and they are rudderless otherwise."

Senator Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat who announced in November that he was leaving Congress after his current term, told CNN's Jake Tapper following the failed vote, "This reaffirms why I did not run for reelection. Because I have come to the conclusion [we're] not going to fix political posturing in Washington, here in Congress, from Washington. It will be fixed from outside of Washington."

"Eighteen thousand border patrol agents have all said this would be the best bill they've ever seen, in the past two decades or more," Manchin said. "This is good for our country. Start putting your country before yourself. Stop worrying about being a Republican or Democrat. If you have to do this to be reelected, you shouldn't want to serve."

Update 2/8/24, 4:40 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with the vote.