WASHINGTON — When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke to congressional leaders in Washington late last year, he told them privately what is now public: With American weapons they could win the war against Russia, without them Russian President Vladimir Putin would achieve victory .
During a subsequent meeting with Mike Johnson, the new Speaker of the House of Representatives, a looming deadline for the deliveries came into focus.
With U.S. aid to Ukraine faltering in Congress, it’s up to Johnson to decide what happens next.
Republican leadership will determine whether the House of Representatives will agree to approve more aid to Ukraine, or whether the US commitment will disappear, marking the end of the line for Kiev’s embattled young democracy.
“We must help now,” President Joe Biden implored Congress from the White House on Friday.
The political and policy decisions before us in Congress are deeply uncertain. Johnson insists he will not be “rushed” into passing the Senate’s $95.3 billion foreign aid package, despite overwhelming support from most Democrats and nearly half of Republicans. But he still needs to chart a path forward in his room.
While many in Congress view Putin as a global threat, especially after Russia intervened in the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump, Johnson’s far-right colleagues are increasingly ambivalent about Putin’s aggression and authoritarian leadership, as evidenced by the admiring videos of conservative Tucker Carlson. Moscow after his recent interview with the Russian leader.
Even the sudden death of Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most famous political prisoner and Putin’s biggest rival, did not appear to persuade the Speaker of the House of Representatives on Friday to commit to supporting Ukraine.
“As Congress debates the best path forward to support Ukraine, the United States and our partners must use all available tools to blunt Putin’s ability to finance his unprovoked war in Ukraine and his aggression against the Baltic states to cut.” Johnson said in a statement.
Only a few months into the job, the new chairman tends to dither on the big questions of the day as he tries to unify his deeply fractured but razor-thin Republican majority in the House of Representatives, which is filled with rising figures who challenging his leadership and, at times, threatening his ouster.
In one of his first interviews since taking the gavel in October, Johnson told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that Congress would “not abandon” Ukraine.
But in the months since, Johnson’s bottom-up leadership style, in which he tries to hear everyone, has created a leadership vacuum in the Ukrainian aid field that others are increasingly willing and able to fill.
Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a Trump ally who opposes more aid to Ukraine, said he hopes to lead a new generation of Republican lawmakers eager to move away from traditional Republican interventionism around the world.
Gaetz said he believes additional U.S. military aid to Ukraine risks escalating the conflict in ways that could be harmful to Americans.
“And I think this is much more important to my voters than which guy gets to run Crimea,” Gaetz said, referring to the region that Russia has claimed from Ukraine as its own.
If the $95 billion aid package were put to a vote, Johnson would receive overwhelming support in the House of Representatives from a coalition of Democrats and Republicans. The package’s anchor amounts to $61 billion for Ukraine, mainly in the form of military equipment from the US. It also sends foreign aid and humanitarian aid to Israel, Gaza and allies in the Indo-Pacific region, including Taiwan.
Biden and Democratic Congressional leaders implore the speaker to throw off his right wing and join forces with them to send a sweeping, bipartisan message from U.S. leadership in supporting Ukraine and reaffirming U.S. commitment to his allies around the world, especially as Trump criticizes the NATO alliance.
“The Republicans in the House of Representatives can either choose America’s national security interests or Vladimir Putin and Russia — it’s not a difficult choice,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said after meeting with Johnson in midweek. spoken.
“The national security bill must be put on the floor for an affirmative or negative vote, and it will pass with overwhelming support from Democrats and Republicans,” Jeffries said.
But for Johnson, as he looks to his own political future, the choices are different. If he appeals to Democrats for a partnership, he will likely face immediate calls for his ouster. That’s what happened when the far right targeted his predecessor, former GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy, after he joined forces with Democrats last fall to pass legislation to prevent the federal government from Close.
Congress is away for a recess, but several coalitions of lawmakers have stepped into the void to try to come up with solutions to help Johnson close the gap.
One idea from centrist Republican and Democratic lawmakers would be to scale back the package to $66 billion, mostly military aid, with nearly $48 billion for Ukraine, but without the economic or humanitarian aid in the Senate-passed bill. It would also address strict immigration controls at the U.S.-Mexico border, similar to those Republicans had pushed for but ultimately rejected in the Senate compromise.
Another idea is to seize some of the $300 billion in Russian assets parked in U.S. banks, something the Biden administration has been considering and which Johnson appeared to hint at in his statement Friday as he looks to ways to prevent taxpayer money from being used to pay for the military. aid to Ukraine.
A long-standing proposal would be to use a procedural tool known as a discharge petition to force the House to vote on the Senate package. But that would require a level of support that seems out of reach on both sides of the aisle.
Democratic Rep. Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, an Air Force veteran who recently traveled to the Baltic region where National Guard troops from her state worked with Lithuanian allies, said I am baffled that colleagues do not understand the Russian threat.
When Johnson said the House will “do its will” rather than take up the Senate package, Houlahan said it is “the will” of the House to vote for it.
“He knows better than this – that there are more than 300 of us willing to vote for this package,” she said.
“He’s the Speaker of the House of Representatives,” she said. “He is not the chairman of the Republicans.”