GOP lawmaker touts latest bipartisan Ukraine-border bill: 'Consistently ties back to invasion'
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., joins 'Your World' to sound off on negotiations on more aid for Ukraine.
A leading Republican House Intelligence Committee member said Thursday he is optimistic about finding a strong, bipartisan answer to both domestic and global security.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Penn., told "Your World" the latest legislative effort to secure the U.S. border, fund Ukrainian defenses and support Israel against Palestinian aggression has the potential to succeed.
His bill comes weeks after top Republicans including former President Trump, decried and ultimately tanked another bipartisan bill critics claimed allowed for too much continued illegal immigration and allowance for the issue to further escalate.
Responding to clips from Fox News anchor Bret Baier's interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy front the front lines, Fitzpatrick said the Ukrainian leader does indeed have reason to be anxious about the future.
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Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Penna. (CQ Roll Call via AP)
However, he told "Your World" the newly introduced legislation is a strong "two-party solution" that addresses the border concerns of the United States, Israel, Taiwan and Ukraine.
"In the past eight weeks I've been to our southern border, I've been to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan's border," Fitzpatrick said.
"I met with the presidents [of Ukraine and Taiwan] and the prime minister … of Israel and the head of CBP here: We have a problem. And it's all consistently tied back to invasions of borders."
He said both Zelenskyy's sense of urgency and that of border communities cannot be stronger, and that many in the U.S. House feel the same way, noting how Ukraine lost another city to Russia recently, tying it to the lack of artillery in Kyiv's hands.
"This is existential and time sensitive, and you cannot play politics with people's lives," said Fitzpatrick, a retired FBI agent.
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"Politics is bad enough when it gets injected into a transportation bill or a post office-naming," Fitzpatrick said. "But when you're talking about people's lives and in the case of our southern border, it's generations of children that we're losing to fentanyl. In the case of Ukraine, people are getting slaughtered on the battlefield."
Fitzpatrick added it is not just the aid itself that is important, but the urgency.
"If we don't get that aid in a timely fashion, all the money that we have spent to … help them hold the line will have been for naught," he said.
The Defending Democracies Act – which Fitzpatrick crafted along with Reps. Jim Costa, D-Calif., Ed Case, D-Hawaii, Jared Golden, D-Maine, Michael Lawler, R-N.Y., Marie Gluesenkamp-Perez, D-Wash. and Lori Chavez-DeRemer, R-Ore. – provides one year of "necessary authorities to secure the U.S. southern border and defense-only appropriations in support of Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan."
In a statement on the bill, Case said the U.S. and world "are watching whether the U.S. Congress is capable of addressing the critical issues in this measure."
"An indefinite impasse in the House after the Senate has acted is not acceptable."
In the joint release, Fitzpatrick added that to any nation, securing one's border is necessary to preserving democracy.