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Biden to sell Americans on billions for Israel, Ukraine in speech
The White House said Biden will unveil a new funding request this week believed to be as much as $100 billion. It may include $60 billion for Ukraine and $10 billion for Israel, sources say, as well as billions for Asia and US border security.
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US President Joe Biden holds a press conference following a solidarity visit to Israel, on October 18, 2023, in Tel Aviv, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. (AFP/Brendan Smialowski)
P
resident Joe Biden will try to sell Americans on the need to spend billions more dollars on Israel and Ukraine on Thursday, even as the US House of Representatives, without a leader, cannot approve new spending on the two wars.
"Hamas's terrorist attacks against Israel," Biden wrote in a social media post listing topics for his White House speech. "The need for humanitarian assistance in Gaza. Russia's ongoing brutal war against Ukraine."
He added: "We are at a global inflection point that is bigger than party or politics."
His televised remarks, at 8 p.m. ET on Thursday, follow a Middle East trip upended by a hospital blast in the Gaza Strip. It is only the second prime-time Oval Office address in the Democratic president's nearly three years in office; in June he cheered the end of a debt ceiling standoff.
The White House said Biden will unveil a new funding request this week believed to be as much as $100 billion. It may include $60 billion for Ukraine and $10 billion for Israel, sources say, as well as billions for Asia and US border security.
A senior White House official said Biden felt it important to speak to the country on why American leadership is needed to help Israel respond to the Oct. 7 slaughter of Israelis by Hamas militants operating from Gaza, and to aid Ukraine's battle to repel Russian invaders.
Biden worked on his speech throughout the week with close aides, including on Wednesday aboard Air Force One on his flight home from Israel, the official said. He was putting final touches on it on Thursday, the official added.
In Tel Aviv on Wednesday, the president pledged $100 million in new funding for humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, and said he would ask Congress for unprecedented aid to boost Israel's fight with Hamas.
"This will also be very much a message to the American people: how those conflicts connect to our lives back here, how support from the American people and the Congress, frankly, is essential," US deputy national security adviser Jon Finer told MSNBC early on Thursday when asked about the speech.
Any funding measure must pass both the Democratic-led US Senate, where additional aid has bipartisan support, and the Republican-led House, which has not had a speaker for 17 days.
Conservative Jim Jordan, an ally of former President Donald Trump, vowed to continue his floundering bid to be House speaker after failing to win majority support among Republicans.
House Republican lawmakers in recent weeks nearly brought government to a halt over chronic budget deficits and $31.4 trillion in debt, threatening to slash government spending across the board.
About four in 10 respondents in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted last week said the US should support Israel's position in the current conflict when given a range of options. Nearly half said Americans should remain neutral or not be involved.
In a separate Reuters/Ipsos poll earlier this month, roughly the same proportion agreed with a statement that Washington "should provide weapons to Ukraine."
"By bringing these two issues together, it will enable Biden to have a conversation with the nation not just about wars that are taking place in isolation, but conflict globally that has significant repercussions for American security interests as a whole," said Carmiel Arbit, a senior fellow at Atlantic Council.
The US president's argument may get a wider-than-normal audience. Fox News, the most-watched cable-news channel, will air the speech in a slot normally reserved for a conservative commentator, after opting out of airing his first Oval Office address.
Biden's brief Israel trip aimed to offer US support following the Hamas attack on Israeli villages and military bases. Biden's planned summit in Jordan joined by the Egyptian and Palestinian leaders was canceled after the Gaza hospital explosion.
Meanwhile, the USS Mount Whitney, a sophisticated command, control, communication and intelligence ship, was heading to the eastern Mediterranean to join a host of US warships already there, the US Navy said.
The US Defense Department told members of Congress at a briefing on Wednesday that it intends to send its two Iron Dome missile defense systems back to Israel as part of a leaseback deal, having experimented with the systems for several years.
