House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) reproached the Senate on Monday for ignoring border security as it prepares to pass a $95 billion defense bill that would fund the war in Ukraine.
Johnson has voiced support for Ukraine since assuming the speakership in October but made clear the assistance would die in the Republican-led House without dramatic changes in policy at the southern border. The Senate negotiated a compromise with the White House to appease Johnson but abandoned the measure last week after Republicans rejected it as insufficiently conservative.
Senate leadership has moved quickly since then to approve the assistance stripped of any border provisions, but the speaker effectively killed any hope the House would take up the bill on Monday, just hours before its passage in the upper chamber.
“The mandate of national security supplemental legislation was to secure America’s own border before sending additional foreign aid around the world. It is what the American people demand and deserve,” 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.”
The posturing from Johnson does not close off the possibility of further Ukraine aid reaching President Joe Biden’s desk. But it does make the road ahead significantly more uncertain.
Johnson has already demanded the president articulate an exit strategy for the war in Ukraine as it enters its third year, and it’s likely the defense bill will need to be pared down to make it through the House.
The Senate removed billions of dollars in direct assistance to the government of Ukraine, but other pots of money, such as humanitarian assistance for Gaza, will surely come under scrutiny by Republicans.
It’s also unclear whether the speaker will continue his insistence that the bill, which provides assistance to Israel and Taiwan as well, be broken up into separate pieces.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The White House has shown some flexibility on the border component itself, agreeing to new restrictions on asylum and parole in the Senate deal that were nonetheless panned by conservatives as a “fig leaf” for the border crisis. Any hope for the aid will depend on Biden’s willingness to negotiate further.
The president has already rejected Johnson’s negotiating position on the border — H.R. 2, the House’s flagship border bill — but the speaker has indicated some flexibility to his counterparts in congressional leadership.
