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On Monday night, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said the Senate bill was dead on arrival in the House because it was “silent” on border security. “The mandate of national security supplemental legislation was to secure America’s own border before sending additional foreign aid around the world,” Johnson said in a statement. “Now, in the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters.” He has reportedly told members that Biden is refusing to meet with him to discuss the border-Ukraine compromise.
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The solution that moderate Republicans suggest would give Johnson a way to bring the bill to the House floor. And it would solve the Republicans’ fundamental political problem, which is that they cannot vote to help Ukraine secure its borders without voting to secure our own borders as well.
The hurdle Johnson would still face is that several Freedom Caucus members who are dead set against such a compromise sit on the House Rules Committee, which decides which bills can come to the floor. So the House would have to suspend the rules to take it up without the committee’s approval. This requires a two-thirds vote as well as the speaker’s consent.
If Johnson won’t provide that consent, supporters of a skinny aid package tell me they won’t rule out using a discharge petition to bring it to the floor anyway. This would require 218 votes, which means a handful of moderate Republicans would have to team up with virtually the entire Democratic caucus. Normally, such a direct assault on their own speaker’s authority would be virtually unthinkable. But GOP moderates watched in October while a handful of far-right extremists teamed up with Democrats to oust Johnson’s predecessor, Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), from the speakership, so they might decide what’s good for the far right is good for the center as well.
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Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Another alternative would be for Johnson to break up the Senate bill into pieces and let the House vote on each element — Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan — separately. Each element would likely pass with a different coalition if allowed a floor vote. But this lets Democrats off the hook on securing the border, which Johnson has said is his nonnegotiable demand.
This much is certain: There is no time to waste. Right now, with military aid stalled, Ukrainian troops are being forced to ration artillery. It is only a matter of time before Congress’s failure to act begins to result in Russian military gains on the ground. Johnson needs to move a bill, and fast.
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Republican moderates in the House have a solution to the congressional stalemate over getting aid to Ukraine: Pass a “skinny” version of the Senate’s supplemental aid package that would cut out economic and humanitarian aid, providing only military aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. In exchange, the bill would include two border provisions: (1) Restoration of Title 42, the covid-related order that allowed border officials to turn away illegal migrants, minus its public health requirements; and (2) reinstatement of the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy, which required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their asylum claims were considered.
Such a deal, which is still being hammered out with moderate House Democrats, makes perfect sense. The European Union just approved a $54 billion economic aid package for Ukraine, so we can let our allies take the lead on humanitarian and financial support for Kyiv. And military provisions make up most of the U.S. aid package anyway.
Marc Thiessen: Ukraine aid’s best-kept secret: Most of the money stays in the U.S.A.
On Tuesday, President Biden demanded the GOP “immediately” pass the Senate’s bill, asking, “Are you going to stand up for freedom, or are you going to side with terror and tyranny? Are you going to stand with Ukraine, or stand with [Vladimir] Putin? Will you stand with America or with Trump?” This was both unhelpful and unrealistic. Attacking Republicans as Trump-Putin stooges is no way to get anything through the House, and the Senate’s bill is not going to become law as written.
Here is the reality: Republicans have something Biden wants — aid for Ukraine. To get it, he needs to give them something they want (and need) — major concessions on border security. Even the many House Republicans who want to help Ukraine need those concessions to do so, so that the anti-Ukraine right cannot accuse them of caring more about Ukraine’s borders than our own.
The reason the Senate border deal is going nowhere was that it was an immigration reform compromise, not a border concession. Republicans were being asked to approve a border-security package they found woefully insufficient — and then approve the aid to Ukraine that Biden wants. That was never going to fly. In fact, it backfired — losing the votes of pro-Ukraine Republicans in the Senate. Passing Ukraine aid is the Republicans’ concession. The Democrats’ concession has to be securing the border.
On Monday night, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said the Senate bill was dead on arrival in the House because it was “silent” on border security. “The mandate of national security supplemental legislation was to secure America’s own border before sending additional foreign aid around the world,” Johnson said in a statement. “Now, in the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters.” He has reportedly told members that Biden is refusing to meet with him to discuss the border-Ukraine compromise.
The solution that moderate Republicans suggest would give Johnson a way to bring the bill to the House floor. And it would solve the Republicans’ fundamental political problem, which is that they cannot vote to help Ukraine secure its borders without voting to secure our own borders as well.
The hurdle Johnson would still face is that several Freedom Caucus members who are dead set against such a compromise sit on the House Rules Committee, which decides which bills can come to the floor. So the House would have to suspend the rules to take it up without the committee’s approval. This requires a two-thirds vote as well as the speaker’s consent.
If Johnson won’t provide that consent, supporters of a skinny aid package tell me they won’t rule out using a discharge petition to bring it to the floor anyway. This would require 218 votes, which means a handful of moderate Republicans would have to team up with virtually the entire Democratic caucus. Normally, such a direct assault on their own speaker’s authority would be virtually unthinkable. But GOP moderates watched in October while a handful of far-right extremists teamed up with Democrats to oust Johnson’s predecessor, Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), from the speakership, so they might decide what’s good for the far right is good for the center as well.
Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Another alternative would be for Johnson to break up the Senate bill into pieces and let the House vote on each element — Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan — separately. Each element would likely pass with a different coalition if allowed a floor vote. But this lets Democrats off the hook on securing the border, which Johnson has said is his nonnegotiable demand.
This much is certain: There is no time to waste. Right now, with military aid stalled, Ukrainian troops are being forced to ration artillery. It is only a matter of time before Congress’s failure to act begins to result in Russian military gains on the ground. Johnson needs to move a bill, and fast.
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