Schumer says Senate will 'move quickly' on supplemental package to Israel

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Senate leaders returned to the floor Monday afternoon for the first time since their Columbus Day recess, which was particularly busy with codels to China and Israel, and behind-the-scenes conversations with the White House about an emergency funding package to Israel. 

"We want to move this package quickly," Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the floor. "The Senate must go first — I know that the House is in disarray, but we cannot wait for them. The needs are too great, and if we pass a strong package, with strong bipartisan support, it will import to in the House somehow or other to act despite the morass they are in."

Schumer led a delegation of bipartisan lawmakers to the Holy Land over the weekend, just a few days after he cut his codel to China short last week. He said on the floor the trip pushed back "in a significant way against the dangerous false equivalency between what Hamas is doing and the response against them."

"Let us be clear. Hamas is an evil organization that wants to see Israel wiped off the face of the map. They don't believe in a two-state solution," he said.