Senate might approve Iron Dome’s replenishment next month

WASHINGTON – As the Senate returns to session, one major issue on top of the agenda for the pro-Israel community is the emergency funding for Iron Dome.

In September, The US House of Representatives approved a stand-alone bill to provide Israel with $1 billion for replenishing the Iron Dome system. The vote passed with an overwhelming majority: 420 members voted in favor of the bill, and nine voted against it.

In the Senate, however, Republican Sen. Rand Paul from Kentucky blocked several attempts to fast track the bill by unanimous consent. Paul said that while he supports the Iron Dome, he thinks “it should be paid for.”

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“I think the American taxpayer dollars that pay for it should come from money that could go to the Taliban,” said Paul last October. He suggested taking the funds from some $6 billion that was designated for the Afghan government. “That money, I think, could be spent on the Taliban, if we do not rescind that money.

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey) rejected Paul’s amendment. “This amendment would slash refugee assistance being used at this very moment to evacuate and resettle US allies and partners who served alongside Americans in the war on terror,” he said.

“The way the Senate procedure works, one senator can block action on any specific legislative item, and Senator Paul tied the Iron Dome funding to US support in Afghanistan,” explains Julie Rayman, Senior Director of Policy and Political Affairs at AJC.

“So because he has made that mark in the sand, they can’t move forward until either he [either] changes his mind or makes a deal with someone or allows it to go through without his contingency of pulling the money from Afghanistan or through some other mechanism,” she said.

One of the other ways that the Senate can proceed with the funding is to tie it to a broader spending bill, says Rayman. “So the plan, as I understand it at this point, is that Iron Dome funding will be included presumably in an omnibus or some other spending package that will be passed before February 18.”

“I’m very optimistic because there is support,” Rayman continued. “Virtually every senator has said they support Israel receiving funding to replenish the Iron Dome missile defense system. There’s not someone who is by virtue of opposing the funding blocking it. It’s simply that Senator Paul has tied it to the condition of where the funding should come from.”

She went on to say that even if it won’t pass in February, she was “equally optimistic that the Senate will pass this funding and the United States will get the funding to Israel for Iron Dome.”

Aaron Weinberg, Director of Government Relations at the Israel Policy Forum said that “no one really knows when it is going to get a vote.” According to Senate rules, a bill can be passed a couple of ways, but the easiest way is to do it by unanimous consent, Weinberg said.

“But Rand Paul continues to object to it being passed by unanimous consent, which means that the bill needs to get a vote,” said Weinberg. “There are a bazillion things that need to get a vote in the Senate. There are so many nominees, there are so many legislations, and because it’s such a divided Senate, every single bill has to go through a large number of procedural hurdles in order to get an actual vote,” he explained.

“There are 99 out of 100 senators who all agree to the unanimous consent request and the precedent that that would set is that if any one senator objects to a bill that they’re going to have to schedule a floor time give every single senator an amount of leverage that would basically shut down the entire Senate because regardless of whether they agree to a bill or not, if they knew that they could force a vote, then there would never be anything that ever got passed by unanimous consent,” Weinberg added.

“The [Iron Dome] bill is not going to get a floor time, so it needs to be attached to a larger package, [probably] the defense appropriations package,” he continued.

Eric Fusfield,  B’nai B’rith International director of legislative affairs, said that the next key moment for Iron Dome will come with the February Continuing resolution, “which should contain emergency funding [for Iron Dome] and if it doesn’t – Congressman Josh Gottheimer has said that he will vote against the C.R. and vote with the Republicans, which would be a standoff moment so that is one way in which Iron Dome funding could occur.”

“Another possible mechanism is it could be included in the annual defense bill, but it’s not clear that that will happen,” Fusfield said. “And then the third option is that Senator Paul will remove his objection.”

“I have not seen or heard of any movement from him on this issue. And so I’m not expecting that. I think the most likely outcome is that it will be included in the February C.R.,” Fusfield estimated. “I do think there will be a showdown of some kind over the February C.R. and it might fail, but I had to guess – it will be included in the C.R., particularly with the administration in favor of Iron Dome funding.”

Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA) said that “all Senate Democrats continue to support immediate and standalone funding for Iron Dome, and have unanimously supported the four Democratic-led attempts to pass such legislation in 2021.”

“Democrats also ensured a Plan B for the additional $1 billion for Iron Dome, placing it in the 2022 Defense Appropriations Bill, yet the trajectory on both legislative options remains unclear at this time given Senator Paul’s hold and Republican obstruction of spending measures in general,” she said.