House Republicans are counting on Friday to help Democrats override their own party's opposition and provide critical votes to consider long-stalled foreign aid bills for Ukraine and Israel.
A key vote in the House was scheduled for Friday morning after the House was forced to rely on Democratic votes late Thursday night to remove the bill from the powerful Rules Committee over Republican opposition, but normally This was an unusual situation for the committee in charge. Strictly along party lines.
Democratic votes will also be needed on Friday to pass a procedural measure called a rule that would allow the aid proposal to be proposed, but it is expected to be another unusual vote in the face of Republican opposition. .
The rules are crucial to Mr. Johnson's plan to pass a foreign aid package through the House of Commons. That's because the rule would allow separate votes on support for Israel and support for Ukraine supported by different coalitions, but then combine them without requiring the presence of MPs. . Vote yes on the entire bill.
That makes it the only all-or-nothing vote lawmakers face on the foreign aid package, making it in many ways more important than any vote on individual parts of the plan. The measure also includes a series of sweeteners, including aid to Taiwan and legislation that would require TikTok to be sold by its Chinese owners or ban the app in the United States.
The rule also covers about six proposed changes to the aid package, including one by Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to zero out funding to Ukraine and one by Florida Republican Rep. Kat Cammack. The floor vote in question will be binding. , which would eliminate all non-military funding to Kiev.
The action unfolded just hours after Republicans took a major step forward Thursday night, uniting with Democrats to advance the bill. The 9-3 bipartisan vote in the Rules Committee was part of a complex process the House is expected to take in the coming days to approve the $95 billion aid package. It reflects the extent of the far-right's anger at Speaker Mike Johnson's plan to pass the bill over the objections of ultra-conservative Republicans, and how he plans to push it across the finish line. This highlights how heavily dependent the Democratic Party is.
Three far-right Republicans on the committee that controls the bill before the House of Representatives refused in a fit of anger to support rules needed to consider a foreign aid bill, leaving the bill likely to die in committee. . But Democrats on the committee intervened and saved this extraordinary breach of convention.
The Rules Committee is traditionally a chair's body, and bills are usually brought to the floor by a direct party-line vote. This time, all Democrats voted to move forward with the plan.
The three Republicans on the committee who called for blocking the bill were Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, and Rep. Thomas Massey of Kentucky.
The trio won seats on the Rules Committee last year as part of a concession by then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who negotiated with ultra-conservatives opposed to selecting him for the top post, which McCarthy conceded. Agreed to support only if. Those are important levers. They refused to support measures to bring forward foreign aid packages. That's because they won't be allowed to vote on stricter border security provisions, which they said should take precedence over aid to Ukraine.
This amounted to an astonishing act of treason, and Democrats were forced to bail out the Speaker and pass the bill through the House.
Mr Johnson plans a House of Commons vote on the aid package on Saturday.
“I'd rather send bullets to Ukraine than boys in America,” he said in an interview on Newsmax Thursday night. “We don't want our boots on the ground. We can prevent that by keeping Putin at bay with our boots.”
