The U.S. House of Representatives passed the State Department’s annual funding bill on Wednesday with billions of dollars in security aid to Israel.
The funding package, which also includes appropriations for the U.S. Treasury Department, the Executive Office of the President, the District of Columbia and other foreign aid, provides Israel with $3.3 billion under the foreign military financing program.
It passed on a bipartisan basis, 341-79.
Along with the $500 million given to Israel as part of the U.S. defense budget for anti-missile programs, the funding passed on Wednesday meets the agreement that Israel and the United States signed in 2016 to provide Israel with $3.8 billion in military aid each fiscal year until 2028.
U.S. military funding to Israel has long been controversial among Israel’s critics. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said recently that he would like to end U.S. foreign assistance to the Jewish state.
“I want to taper off military aid within the next 10 years,” he told the Economist. “We very deeply appreciate the military aid that America has given us over the years, but here, too, we’ve come of age.”
“We’ve developed incredible capacities, and our economy, which will soon reach—certainly within a decade, it’ll reach about $1 trillion,” he said. “It’s not a huge economy. It’s not a small economy.”
The Israeli premier added that reducing U.S. military aid to zero within the next 10 years was “in the works.”
Moving to reduce U.S. aid might improve Israel’s ability to act independently following accusations from the Israeli government and some Republicans in Congress that the United States slow-rolled arms shipments during the Biden administration over concerns about civilian deaths in Gaza.
But it may also face pushback from American lawmakers, given that the money provided to Israel is largely used to purchase U.S. arms, like the F-35, and is effectively a subsidy for the American defense industry.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said that if Israel doesn’t want the money, the United States shouldn’t wait 10 years for Netanyahu to taper it off, and said that he would “dramatically expedite the timetable.”
“The billions in taxpayer dollars that would be saved by expediting the termination of military aid to Israel will and should be plowed back into the U.S. military, which is the best in the world and in great demand,” Graham wrote on Friday.
“These billions need to be recouped as soon as possible so we can help meet President Trump’s $1.5 trillion national budget goal for our military,” he said.
In addition to the military assistance to Israel, Wednesday’s funding package includes other Israel-related provisions, including a continued ban on U.S. funding to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA, and prohibitions on funding international courts that are investigating Israel.
AIPAC welcomed the passage of the bill in the House on Wednesday.
“The pro-Israel provisions in this bill further reinforce the bipartisan and ironclad support for the U.S.-Israel partnership in Congress,” it stated. “These resources help ensure that our ally can confront shared strategic threats and that America has a strong and capable ally in the heart of the Middle East.”
