Six months after it began in earnest, the fight on Capitol Hill over whether to send more aid to Ukraine to defend itself against an unprovoked invasion from Russia may finally be coming to an end.
President of the Chamber Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Wednesday unveiled a bill to provide $60.8 billion in military and economic assistance to the embattled country, aiming for a House vote on Saturday. The measure would be one of three aid packages; the second would be a law to help Israel in its war with Hamas in Gaza, and the third would be to help bolster the defenses of Taiwan and other allies in the Indo-Pacific region against China.
The bills, first announced on Monday night but whose details were only released on Wednesday, could also start the clock. how long will Johnson keep his job as a speaker — a perspective the Louisiana congressman said he was not afraid.
“My philosophy is to do the right thing and let the chips fall where they may,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
“To be frank, I’d rather send bullets to Ukraine than American boys,” Johnson added. “This isn’t a game. It’s not a joke.”
Representative. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), which presented a motion to remove Johnson in March but avoided calling for a vote on it, signaled on Wednesday that she was not yet ready to pull the trigger.
“We don’t want the chaos that was created last time and we need an organized process if we do,” Greene told reporters later in the day.
In October, after eight Republicans voted with all Democrats remove former California representative Kevin McCarthy from speaker’s chair, Republicans saw the House paralyzed for three weeks as they tried unsuccessfully to reach agreement on a successor. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who supports Greene’s effort, said Johnson should indicate a date by which he will leave office in order to give the party time to decide on his replacement.
All three bills enjoy broad bipartisan support, although Republicans are expected to align more strongly with the Israel measure, while Democrats will provide the bulk of the votes for Ukraine.
The fight over whether to give Ukraine more aid, beyond the roughly $70 billion in aid it has received from the United States since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, has been going on since autumn 2023.
Initially, the White House requested a much smaller package as part of a planned series of packages. But as the war in Ukraine became increasingly unpopular with Republican voters, Republicans in Congress became more reluctant to support what had been, for some months, a bipartisan cause.
In September, McCarthy, then still speaker of the House, cut $6 billion in war funding from interim spending bill just before the government was shut down. The measure challenged Democrats to insist on including Ukraine funding and to take the blame for shutting down the government when Republicans refused; or agree and try to get the money approved later, after Republicans demanded that the U.S. not set aside any more money for Ukraine unless Congress also implemented new immigration restrictions. Democrats blinked.
In February, Senate Democrats took up the challenge of implementing border reforms and allowed a border bill negotiated by Sen. Jim Lankford (R-Okla.) and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) to reach the floor as a bipartisan proposal. . But Republicans, acting at the behest of presidential candidate Donald Trump, stalled the bill, fearing it would give Biden an election year victory.
The Senate later approved, on bipartisan lines, a $95 billion aid package, which bundled military aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, along with humanitarian aid for Gaza.
The new GOP proposal essentially separates the elements of the Senate bill to allow them to be voted on separately and adds a fourth element in the form of a national security bill. Johnson said the separation will allow House members to vote according to their conscience on individual portions.
The White House has endorsed all three foreign aid bills. “The House must approve the package this week and the Senate must follow it quickly. I will sanction this immediately to send a message to the world: we stand with our friends and will not allow Iran or Russia to succeed,” President Joe Biden said in a statement.
Razom for Ukraine, an advocacy organization, also endorsed Johnson’s Ukraine bill. “Our message to the House today is simple – vote yes. Ukraine does not have time for Congress to waste,” said Mykola Murskyj, director of advocacy at Razom.
The House’s three relief bills have some new features compared to the Senate package. It would require that the nonmilitary aid in the bill be structured as a loan, although that loan could be forgiven in the future. It would require the administration to present to Congress a strategic document to help Ukraine win, complete with annual estimates of projected costs.
And it was unclear whether the bills, although voted on separately, would be brought together again before being sent to the Senate. This could potentially complicate things.
But opponents of aid to Ukraine were already feeling pessimistic on Wednesday about its prospects.
“I don’t think we should get to November having completely capitulated at the border, shrugging our shoulders and saying, ‘Oh, well, I hope Trump bails us out,’ while completely giving up our Article 1 powers to hold this president accountable. ,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas).
Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, was disappointed that the House remained in session for two more days this week to vote on bills “to defend the borders of other nations, to borrow money that we don’t have to send abroad, not to defend our borders and do it with predominantly Democratic votes.”
“This is a huge failure, a huge disappointment,” he said.
