The House Should Find a Way to Vote on Supporting Our Allies

National Review Online

Wednesday, February 21, 2024

 

The House of Representatives is stuck.

 

The supplemental foreign-aid bill that passed the Senate with 70 votes also has majority support in the House, but Speaker Mike Johnson doesn’t dare bring it up for fear of losing his job.

 

So the $95 billion bill, with important funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan as well as the U.S. defense-industrial base, is languishing in a box canyon. That aid is especially urgent for Ukraine, which cannot force Russia to make a settlement on terms favorable to the West — and may not even be able to survive — without it.

 

One way to get it on the floor is a so-called discharge petition. This is a rarely successful maneuver to free a bottled-up bill on the floor through 218 members signing on to “discharge” it. This works about once a decade. It usually requires a unified minority party and a handful of highly motivated members of the majority willing to buck their leadership.

 

The problem here is that the most progressive members of the Democratic caucus — opposed to unconditional Israel funding — might not be willing to sign on, which would push the number of Republicans needed to sign on implausibly high.

 

If the Senate bill were to make it on the floor and pass, meanwhile, it would mean Republicans would get nothing on the border. While President Biden needs no new statutory authority to enforce the immigration laws much more vigorously than he has done, lasting progress on the border requires some congressional action.

 

If Johnson has a plan to deal with the situation, he hasn’t shared it with anyone. Simply bringing the bill up for a vote would cause a revolt among the GOP’s fiercest opponents of Ukraine aid. They would vote against the rule, the procedural measure setting the conditions for debate on the bill. It used to be that such rules automatically passed, but Republican backbenchers now fairly routinely tank them. So, it’s not an option to have Republican members vote for the rule and then vote against the underlying bill (while Democrats provide the margin for passage).

 

And, of course, a few discontented members, as we’ve already seen this Congress, can depose a speaker. Johnson doesn’t want to find his own head on a platter.

 

There may be no way out, but Republican members who want to see something along the lines of the package pass should continue to see whether they can find a formula that works. A bipartisan group of centrists added border measures to the foreign aid. Their proposal isn’t going anywhere, but the basic idea is the right one. It may be that combining stronger, stripped-down versions of the border provisions from the failed Senate deal, taking out the $19 billion in non-defense spending in the foreign-aid bill, and structuring the Ukraine aid as a loan, as suggested by Donald Trump, makes the package attractive to more Republicans. It might still require a discharge petition to get it on the floor, though, and such a proposal would lose many more Democrats.

 

The Republican House majority hasn’t done itself any favors over the last few months as it’s presented an image of chaos and dysfunction to the public. While we understand the obstacles, corralling a thin and unruly majority is what Johnson signed up for, and it is his responsibility as leader to forge a path forward. Not finding a way even to vote on this legislation — as Russia gains the upper hand in Ukraine and as Israel continues to wage a war of self-defense against its terrorist enemies — would add to the dismal picture.