Sen. Tom Cotton, before Sunday's procedural Senate vote to advance a $95 billion supplemental aid bill for Ukraine and Israel, said he would be voting no, particularly after the failure of a bill that would have added border security to the measure.
"We did spend four months promising the American people that we would secure our own border before we focused on other countries' borders," the Arkansas Republican said on "Fox News Sunday." "The legislation that's left, I have serious concerns about the $19 billion of non-defense aid in there."
He added that he believes Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., "did as good a job as he could" negotiating with Democrats on the initial compromise bill, and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, did a "great job in trying to get more defense aid and less non-defense aid."
Still, the bill spends billions on non-defense aid, coming at a time when it could instead be spent on U.S. defense, "so that's another reason why I'm going to be a no on this bill," said Cotton.
Meanwhile, critics have complained that the compromise bill failed because Republicans are "afraid" of former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the party's presidential nomination, Fox News' Shannon Bream told Cotton, but he denied that happened.
"What President Trump saw about this bill is what most Arkansans saw about it, what all but four Republican senators saw, which is that it does not solve the problem," said Cotton. "Yes, it had some positive reforms. But in the end, by institutionalizing or codifying a lot of President Biden's abuses over the last three years, it would allow this flow of migrants to continue."
Cotton said he wants what most Republican senators and Trump wants, and that is to stop the border crisis.
"We can see with Joe Biden ideologically invested in open borders, the way to stop that crisis is to elect President Trump this fall," said Cotton. "He did it once and he can do it again."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.