House lawmakers on a bipartisan basis advanced a $95 billion package of foreign aid bills out of committee late Thursday evening to counter Russian, Iranian and Chinese aggression, setting the legislation up for a contested floor vote this weekend.
Democrats in the minority on the House Rules Committee in a rare move joined with Republicans in the majority to vote 9-3 on the passage of further military assistance funding and humanitarian aid for the war-torn nations of Ukraine and Israel, as well as the vulnerable island of Taiwan.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other foreign dignitaries have urged Western nations to back Kyiv in its war against Russia, which entered its third year in February, and Iran last weekend launched a direct airstrike on Israel amid the Jewish state’s months-long war with Hamas terrorists in Gaza.
Israel, in turn, launched its expected retaliatory strike against Iran on Friday morning, ABC News reported, citing US officials.
Rules GOP Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Chip Roy of Texas and Ralph Norman of South Carolina opposed the US aid funding, accusing House Speaker Mike Johnson of “breaking his promise” to put border security concerns first.
“I’m a child of the ’80s. I regard myself as a Reagan Republican. I understand the concept of maintaining peace through strength,” Johnson (R-La.) told CNN’s Jake Tapper in a Wednesday interview.
“We’re not going to get 100% of what we want right now because we have the smallest majority in history and we only have the majority in one chamber,” he said, anticipating a close vote Saturday night in the House.
The House speaker shrugged off a similar bill passed by the Senate in February over its failure to address US border security, but assured Republicans that they would have an opportunity to vote on a bill with the “core components” of their signature border package passed last year.
Far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a firm critic of Johnson who is threatening to oust him over the foreign aid package, submitted a flurry of amendments to the bills in protest — including one requiring US lawmakers who pass Ukraine funding to conscript in the nation’s military themselves.
Massie joined with Greene (R-Ga.) on a motion she introduced to vacate Johnson and called on the House speaker to resign in a closed-door conference meeting on Tuesday, telling The Post and other reporters later that he did so to “avoid the situation where he gets vacated from the floor” after the foreign aid passes.
“The Hastert Rule, if you remember, says that if a majority of the majority doesn’t support it, you don’t bring it to the floor,” Massie said, referring to former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.
“The Johnson Rule is if 80% of Democrats don’t support it, you don’t bring it to the floor. And that’s problematic,” he added.
“If Mike Johnson insists on getting to the endpoint that Joe Biden and [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer want,” Massie said of the House bills mirroring the Senate legislation, “I think he’s already over-drafted on his political capital.”
The president, Schumer (D-NY) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have urged Johnson to pass the $95 billion in aid for Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific for more than two months, but Biden came out quickly to support the House bills.
“I strongly support this package to get critical support to Israel and Ukraine, provide desperately needed humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza, and bolster security and stability in the Indo-Pacific,” he said in a statement.
“The House must pass the package this week and the Senate should quickly follow. I will sign this into law immediately to send a message to the world: We stand with our friends, and we won’t let Iran or Russia succeed.”
The House rejiggered the Senate package by upping the amount of funding that goes toward stockpiles of American weapons and munitions, adding oversight conditions on Ukraine assistance and doubling the amount of aid to Israel.
It also approves $1.6 billion of the Ukraine aid in the form of US loans and loan guarantees, which was suggested by former President Donald Trump.
In total, $60.84 billion is set aside for Ukraine, $26.38 billion for Israel and $8.12 billion for the Indo-Pacific, roughly half of which is apportioned for Taiwan.
“My philosophy is you do the right thing and you let the chips fall where they may,” Johnson told reporters Wednesday afternoon on Capitol Hill. “If I operated out of fear of a motion to vacate, I would never be able to do my job.”
“History judges us for what we do — this is a critical time right now,” he went on. “I think providing lethal aid to Ukraine right now is critically important.”
“I really do believe the intel and the briefings that we’ve gotten; I believe that [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping], and [Russian President] Vladimir Putin and Iran really are an axis of evil; I think they’re in coordination on this,” Johnson said. “I think that Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe if he were allowed; I think he might go to the Balkans next; I think he might have a showdown with Poland or one of our NATO allies.”
“To put it bluntly, I would rather send bullets to Ukraine than American boys,” he said of the great stakes of the war with Russia.
The House will take a procedural vote Friday on the measures, which members of the conservative Freedom Caucus have pledged to block, meaning Democrats will have to vote it forward in the narrowly divided chamber.
Moderate Democrats like New York Rep. Tom Suozzi have already pledged their support in anticipation.
