WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Mike Johnson, facing a choice between potentially losing his job and promoting aid to Ukraine, on Wednesday aimed for a vote later this week on a financing package that would also include Israel and Taiwan includes.
After waffling for days on how to move forward with the package, the Republican speaker texted Republican lawmakers that he will begin a days-long effort to hold votes on three financing packages for Ukraine, Israel and allies in the Indo-Pacific, as well as and several other foreign policy proposals in a fourth bill.
Johnson said he proposed structuring some of the aid to Kiev in the form of loans, along with more oversight, but the decision to support Ukraine at all has angered populist conservatives in the House of Representatives and given new energy to the threat to remove him from the gavel. office.
“By posting the text of these bills as soon as they are ready, we will ensure there is time for a robust amendment process,” Johnson wrote in his message, which was shared by two Republican lawmakers.
Votes on the package are expected Saturday evening, Johnson said. But he must walk a treacherous path to get there.
The president will almost certainly need democratic support in the procedural maneuvers to advance his complex plan, which will see each of the aid packages voted on separately.
It was not clear whether Democrats would support Johnson. They were still waiting for the details of the legislation and have become increasingly impatient with its deliberations.
Democrats have demanded that the foreign aid bill closely follow the $95 billion foreign aid package that the Senate passed in February. That legislation would fund U.S. allies and provide humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza and Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the threat to impeach Johnson from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, gained support this week. Another Republican, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, said he joined Greene in calling on Johnson to resign. Other Republican lawmakers have openly complained about Johnson’s leadership.
“You are seriously out of step with Republicans by continuing to pass bills that depend on Democrats,” Greene wrote on the social platform X. “Everyone sees through this.”
In an effort to appease conservatives, Johnson said he would hold a separate vote on a border security package that includes most of a bill already passed by Republicans in the House of Representatives last year. That bill has already been rejected by the Democratic-controlled Senate, and conservatives quickly criticized the plan for a separate vote on it as insufficient. Rep. Chip Roy of Texas called the strategy a “complete failure.”
The ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus posted on X that Johnson “surrendered the last chance we have to fight the border crisis.”
As part of the foreign aid package, Johnson also said members of the House of Representatives would have the opportunity to vote on a range of foreign policy proposals, including allowing the US to seize frozen assets from Russia’s central bank, imposing sanctions on Iran, Russia and China, and possibly banning the video app TikTok if its China-based owner does not sell its stake.
The precarious effort to approve the foreign aid comes as lawmakers focused on national security warn that the House must act after waiting nearly two months for Johnson to bring up foreign aid.
On the House Intelligence Committee, the Republican chairman, Rep. Mike Turner, and the top Democrat, Rep. Jim Himes, issued a joint statement Tuesday saying they had been informed in a classified briefing that it was important to secure funding for Ukraine this week provide. .
“The United States must now oppose Putin’s war of aggression as Ukraine’s situation on the ground is critical,” the lawmakers said in a statement.
Still, there was growing recognition in the House that Johnson could soon leave the speaker’s office.
“This is an opportunity to do the right thing,” Representative Don Bacon, a Republican from Nebraska, said this week. “If you pay for it, you will be known in history as the man who did the right thing even though it cost him a job.”
