Although Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell were ready to issue Ukraine aid, it was GOP Sen. Rand Paul who put a stop to the proceedings. The Senator from Kentucky decided to stop such a historic moment in order to demand major changes to the legislation that was minutes away from being passed.
Despite the pressure created by the two leaders, Paul refused to back down- which means that Schumer will need to take more procedural steps in order to overcome this objection. While this could take quite a few days, it would ultimately lead to the passage of the supplemental spending bill sometime in the next week.
Rand Paul Wants Major Changes Made To Bill
On Thursday, both Schumer and McConnell decided to offer a vote on the amendment to Rand Paul, but he also insisted it is added to the bill that was underlying this. The change that Paul was seeking would definitely create a special inspector general to oversee how the military aid provided to Ukraine would be spent. As it stands, members from both parties would broadly agree to the notion but forcing a change to this bill would definitely be very time-consuming. It would also halt the proceedings from pushing for aid to Ukraine.
Schumer did mention that the package was almost ready to go, with the vast majority of the Senators agreeing with the proposition. As of now, there was just a single thing that was preventing the junior senator from Kentucky (Rand Paul) from preventing a swift passage of this aid to Ukraine- and that was due to him wanting to implement the changes directly into the bill. His change was then strongly opposed by most of the members of both parties.
McConnell added that the proper protocol would be to vote on the amendment that Senator Rand Paul wanted, and then they would be passing on the supplemental.
