Neal Hopeful “Recalcitrants” Won’t Knock Congress Off Course
By Chris Lisinski, State House News Service
DEC. 12, 2023…..One of the top Massachusetts Democrats in Congress sees “broad support” for action this week to support Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan and to strengthen the nation’s borders, but political sparring might suffocate any consensus.
Congressman Richard Neal told business leaders Monday that he hopes this week in Washington, D.C. will be “the last session until January.” Representatives and senators face a jam-packed agenda, with negotiations ongoing over a supplemental funding proposal President Joe Biden filed and talks underway about the latest annual national security package.
Neal said lawmakers “are going to have to reauthorize” the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, a compromise $886 billion version of which emerged from negotiations last week. He called the bill “a big deal,” noting that its bottom line has nearly tripled since he joined Congress in 1989.
Biden also asked for $105 billion in October to steer more aid to Ukraine and Israel, counter China’s influence, and boost shelter funding amid an influx of migrants.
“I hope the package that we will develop this week will be aid for Ukraine. We need to stand with Ukraine against this punitive invasion,” Neal said at a breakfast hosted by the New England Council, drawing applause. “The president has proposed $14 billion for Israel, our fast ally. What China is doing in the South China Sea — we need to come to the aid of Taiwan as well.”
The Springfield Democrat added that both he and Biden are “open to a border negotiation,” an issue that Republicans in Congress have repeatedly hammered with calls for substantial policy changes.
“We need a process and a plan and legislation. The current chaos that we’re witnessing cannot be sustained,” Neal said. “The president has said, look, I’m open to giving you a serious plan, and we can undertake it.”
“I think those four parts of this legislation could be done this week if people would come together and understand that this is going to be a very important part of not only Joe Biden’s legislative achievement, but a congressional legislative achievement. There’s broad support for what I’ve just described,” he added. “We just need to get it to the floor and get it passed, instead of what’s happened, where you have more and more of the recalcitrants on both sides who then use the opportunity to say something didn’t happen to politically promote themselves. Well, it didn’t happen largely because they want to make sure it didn’t happen, because better to have the argument ongoing for their own purposes than it is to try to find the solutions I’ve just described.”
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is set to meet with Biden on Tuesday and speak with lawmakers, according to NBC News, which described “growing GOP skepticism about providing more financial and military support for Ukraine in its war against Russia.”
Biden’s supplemental funding package also includes money to fund the nation’s response to a sharp rise in migrants.
Several states have faced an unprecedented increase in migrant arrivals, and Massachusetts is alone in being required under state law to offer shelter placement to eligible families, prompting hundreds of millions of dollars in expenses. Unable to keep up with demand, the Healey administration this fall implemented a cap of 7,500 families, shifting other eligible shelter-seekers onto a waitlist.
Neal and his colleagues in the Massachusetts delegation appealed to the Biden administration last week to increase federal funding for the Shelter and Services Program (SSP) and to more equitably distribute it between border states and “interior states.”
“SSP funds are vital to support states encountering large numbers of migrants who need humanitarian assistance. However, the $1.4 billion requested in the supplemental will not cover the high expenses states are currently encountering, especially interior states,” they wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and FEMA Administrator Deanne Caswell. “Massachusetts only received about $2 million dollars in funding from the program this year. As of August, Massachusetts was spending more than $45 million a month to house, feed, and provide necessary medical services to migrant families. Therefore, the $1.4 billion supplemental request is a fraction of the collective need of our state, interior states, and border communities.”
During his Boston event hosted by the New England Council, Neal also touched on his support for expansion of the child tax credit, decades of missed opportunities on infrastructure funding, and the “need to address the issue of antisemitism in America.”
He called for action to better regulate the use of artificial intelligence tools that have grown increasingly popular.
“This will be the incubator on the East Coast, Massachusetts, as well as what’s happening in Silicon Valley. I think the Europeans are ahead of us on this. Regulation of AI is going to be really important,” Neal said. “Nobody’s talking about shutting down free speech, nobody’s talking about changing a forum, but we need to know what it is that we’re embracing. We need to know the consequences of what artificial intelligence is going to do, and I’m hoping we can do it short of a sledgehammer but perhaps more than a butter knife.”