Speaker Johnson’s Ukraine Package Clears Key Hurdle With Democratic Help

WASHINGTON—The House voted 316-94 to advance House Speaker Mike Johnson’s $95 billion foreign aid and weapons package Friday, with Democrats backing the Republican leader’s effort to set up final passage this weekend over the objections of dozens of GOP colleagues.

The successful passage of the rule marks a major step forward for the measure, seen as critical to helping Ukraine withstand Russia’s invasion and help rearm Israel in its recent hostilities with Iran. Johnson has pushed the package through the narrowly divided chamber even as a small number of dissident Republicans, skeptical of further Ukraine aid and upset over the lack of U.S. border provisions, have called on him to resign as speaker.

“I hope at the end we can take care of our responsibilities,” said Johnson on “The Mark Levin Show” on Thursday, arguing that not sending aid now would lead to heavier spending and U.S. troop involvement later. “Ukrainians desperately need lethal aid right now. I mean we can’t allow Vladimir Putin to roll through another country.”

In comments Friday, Johnson nodded to critics’ concerns about the bill but said it was the “best possible product that we can get under these circumstances.” He also said that Democrats had been prepared to launch an effort to bypass GOP leaders and force their own package onto the floor if he hadn’t moved his own plan.

Johnson unveiled his foreign-aid proposal earlier this week after months of deliberation, amid heavy pressure from other congressional leaders and the White House over the increasingly desperate situation in Ukraine.

The House proposal largely matches the price tag and contours of a measure that passed the Democratic-controlled Senate earlier this year. Johnson’s innovation was to split up the measure into separate votes, to allow members to vote for aid for one country but not another, for instance.

It also includes provisions revising a bill to force the sale of TikTok, as well as a measure called the REPO Act to use seized Russian assets for the Ukraine war effort.

The package now heads to a final set of votes scheduled for Saturday afternoon. The House rule establishes that the bills, if passed, would be tied together and sent to the Senate as one measure, which would then face an up-or-down vote. President Biden has said he supports the House bill and has urged fast action.

Johnson has a historically thin 218-213 margin in the House and has to manage a fluid band of GOP dissenters, often forcing him to accept Democrats’ help. The bipartisan nature of the rule vote Friday stirred up fury on the House floor, raising the prospect that dissident Republicans would move forward with an attempt to oust Johnson.

“I hope not, but I think it’s possible,” said Rep. Dan Meuser (R., Pa.) when asked about the chances that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) would call up her motion to remove Johnson from the speakership. “There’s some strong language out there. People are saying he lied,” he said. “I don’t think anybody lied. I think everybody’s just trying to make the sausage taste good to everybody.”

Rep. Thomas Massie (R., Ky.), the second person to co-sponsor the motion to vacate the chair, said that no measure to vacate would be called up Friday. Instead, he said that the goal was to pressure Johnson to give up the speakership, in much the same way that a 2015 motion to vacate the chair pushed then-House Speaker John Boehner to step down without putting the House through a chaotic period with no leader.

“This is a call to resign,” Massie said. Rep. Paul Gosar (R., Ariz.) on Friday added his name to the list of Republicans endorsing a motion to push out Johnson.

The rule vote was the latest reminder of how Johnson is effectively running a bipartisan coalition on major legislation that ignores his right flank, a strategy employed on bills ranging from avoiding government shutdowns to renewing federal surveillance powers.

As a matter of principle, the minority party rarely helps the majority pass rules, since it allows the leader to pass bills on a simple majority vote. But moves by some Republicans in the past year to block rules—freezing the House floor to put pressure on party leaders—have turned many longstanding conventions on their head. Before this Congress, no rule had failed for 20 years, but this year there have been more than a half dozen.

The vote marked only the second time Democrats have backed the speaker on a rule this Congress. In May 2023, Democrats supplied 52 votes to help then House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) advance a rule to set up a simple-majority vote on raising the nation’s borrowing limit. This time, Democrats delivered more than half of the total votes to pass the rule, with 165 Democrats for the measure compared with 151 Republicans. Fifty-five Republicans voted against the rule.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) said that he hadn’t spoken directly to Johnson about the number of needed Democratic votes because the writing was already on the wall. “It was pretty obvious to us…that this was going to require substantial Democratic participation,” Jeffries told reporters.

Passage of the rule, which establishes the ground rules for the consideration of four bills related to Ukraine, Israel, the Indo-Pacific including Taiwan, and the popular TikTok app, sets the stage for a final vote on Saturday to approve the measures. In contrast to other recent votes where Johnson has had to rely on Democrats to get a two-thirds supermajority, passage of the rule means the final vote Saturday would be a simple majority.

“We may be in the minority, but we are not going to let that urgent mission fail,” said Rep. Don Beyer (D., Va.). “Democrats are doing what it takes to make sure Ukraine gets help.”

Johnson’s decision to put forward the package set in motion the possibility of his own ouster. Greene last month filed a motion to force Johnson out of the speakership but didn’t force a vote, putting him on notice that she could make good on her threat if he scheduled a vote on Ukraine funding after previously clearing a big fiscal 2024 spending bill through the House.

Massie joined the effort this week and said Johnson should resign to spare the caucus another drag-out fight, like the one that ensued after former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) was ousted last year. “I am not resigning,” Johnson responded.

Jeffries has said he believed some Democrats would come to Johnson’s aid if Republican dissidents tried to sack the speaker, but he has made no promises. Democrats’ support of the rule vote was no surprise, as members helped move the measure past an initial procedural hurdle in the House Rules Committee on Thursday night, after three Republicans on the panel, including Massie, voted against the step. It was the first time since at least 1995 that the minority party had helped the majority party pass a rule through committee.

Write to Siobhan Hughes at [email protected], Natalie Andrews at [email protected] and Katy Stech Ferek at [email protected]