The Senate has easily passed more than one point seven trillion dollar government funding package. Let's dig into this a bit because it still has a way to go. Joining us is Bloomberg's Eric Wasson, Eric, thanks so much. Now, this vote had the added flavor if I may say, of Vladimir Zelenski's a visit and speech last night, does this include that that aid for Ukraine? In fact it does. Yes, there's forty seven billion dollars to address the Ukraine situation.
Not all of it goes directly to Zelenski's government to a twenty eight billion is in direct funding, but it goes to allies to boot boosting US troops in the region, refugee admission here in the US. But this is on top of sixty five billion so far this year. So it is another big infusion to help Ukraine, and it's heading for a House vote tomorrow morning. Now, straighten out for me that the patriot Mischels was a large deal or is a large d for President Zelenski? Is that
part of this funding packages that separate? How does that work? Well, that was already paid for by previous funding. Uh, you know, Congress authorizes and appropriate this money, and then it's up to the Biden administration to to start dolling that out. So they announced some of the money going being released directly when Zelinski was was in town and that that was part of that. Now Zelenski is also pushing for abrams,
tanks of sixteens, other weapons that to summon. The Defense Department are nervous about giving to Ukraine for fear of escalating the war um but at least Rob Portman, who was a major booster of the Ukraine effort, a Republican senator from Ohio, thinks that perhaps the visit will help the Ukraine to get those additional weapons and sometimes too,
and this includes the electoral college revamp. That's right, and if if a listeners recall in January six, President Trump and his supporters were trying to convince the vice president to union latterly overturned the tooral college votes. There were some unclear writing in the in the US law about the role of the vice president. This this would clarify these purely ministerial ceremonial He has no power to do that and to try to ward off, you know, any
repeat of the January six insurrections. Now this funds the government for the rest of fiscal three. Um. It still needs to go to the House. Do we have any idea on the timetable there? Yeah? It Well, it's going to It looks like it's gonna pass the House tomorrow morning, Friday morning, ahead of the deadline. They'll take a while for the bill to be printed on parchment as they still do. It's a four thousand, one and fifty page bill. Uh,
maybe a little bit longer do some amendments. So there will be a one week stop gap to give the time to do that, and Biden will have probably next week to sign this before the funding runs out. Now, Eric, this this is I'm going to do pie the sky with you here. Um. This was a pretty good in the Senate, at least bipartisan effort, and the hope would be that the two parties would maybe be able to
make nice nice going on some stuff forward. Uh. Does this show a trend or is that just flatly Baxter naive? I think it's actually the opposite. I think Senate Republicans cut this deal to boost the military to seventy six
billion dollar increase for the for defense. Uh. Now because they feel like there's going to be gridlocked, and once the House Republicans take over my personal forecasts, we're gonna see stopcap measures perhaps for the next two years as as both sides try to try to use the budget process to score policy wins. Uh you know, it's going
to be very rocky. There could be a government shutdown when this bill expires September thirty ye, because we're seeing things like, uh, you know, attempts to build a border wall again, talked about defunding specific uh you know officials using the appropch process, and also clawing back the eight hundred billion dollars that was granted the I R S to to go after wealthy tax evasion. So um, you know, those things are just non starters for Democrats and could
just leap to gridlock. Yeah, okay, alright, well, so much for positive Thank you, thank you for the reality. Eric Bloomberg's Eric Watson. We appreciate your help.