House OKs spending bill with Ukraine aid

The House approved a $1.5 trillion funding measure Wednesday that includes $13.6 billion in emergency money for Ukraine and European allies. It passed in two separate votes, with broad bipartisan support for security and defense measures. The bill’s other provisions passed largely along party lines. The overall package funds Republican and Democratic priorities, including a 5.6 percent increase in defense spending and a 6.7 percent increase in domestic spending on things such as child nutrition and child care, improving broadband in rural areas, and processing migrants at the U.S. southern border.

Were there hold-ups? The bill was set to include a $15 billion coronavirus aid package that would shore up the nation’s stockpile of supplies and treatments. Lawmakers planned to fund the aid with unspent money allocated to state governments for emergency COVID-19 pandemic relief. Some House Democrats complained that the plan rewarded states that already spent their coronavirus allocations and punished those that hadn’t. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that they pulled pandemic funding Wednesday so they could pass the rest of the package more quickly. 

Dig deeper: Read Carolina Lumetta’s report in The Sift on how Biden’s last spending package failed the vote.