When a team of three top Biden administration national security officials gave a private briefing to the House of Representatives on Oct. 11, they proposed working with Congress on emergency funding to tackle multiple foreign-policy crises at once: the Israel-Hamas war, the war in Ukraine, support for Taiwan, and the U.S. southern border.
In the past, such a proposal wouldn’t elicit much controversy. Even in the hyper-partisan House, support for Israel is virtually unanimous, while nearly all Democrats and most Republicans broadly agree on funding to back Ukraine and counter Russia and China. But when the administration officials brought up the idea of a joint supplemental funding package in the briefing, a group of Republicans responded by jeering them with a chorus of boos.
The exchange, described to Foreign Policy by one lawmaker in attendance and three congressional aides briefed on the matter, offers a glimpse into how the chaos in the Republican-controlled House is morphing from a domestic political circus into a massive foreign-policy headache for the Biden administration. How that chaos plays out could have major implications for the scale and timing of U.S. security assistance to Israel as well as the continued flow of U.S. military aid to Ukraine, seen as critical in its war against Russia.
