WASHINGTON — The Senate’s big bipartisan vote on Tuesday passing billions in aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan has turned up the heat on Speaker Mike Johnson and the House to do something to help some of America’s key allies.
But the Louisiana Republican signaled he won’t bring the Senate-passed package to the floor unless it’s paired with strict border policies endorsed by House Republicans after he helped kill a version of the Senate bill that included border security and asylum provisions.
Here are six possible options for Johnson as he weighs what to do about foreign aid.
Put the Senate bill on the floor
The only course of action to quickly guarantee aid to Ukraine and Israel is if Johnson puts the Senate-passed $95 billion foreign aid package on the House floor for a vote. Even Arizona Republican Rep. Andy Biggs, a leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, acknowledged that if the bill were put on the floor, “it would pass — let’s just be frank about that.”
But that scenario is extremely unlikely in a House where GOP support for Ukraine continues to wane. Asked Tuesday if he would put the aid package on the floor as is, Johnson himself threw cold water on it. “National security begins with border security,” he replied.
And, to make matters more complicated for Johnson, any one member can trigger a vote to oust him from the job like they did to former Speaker Kevin McCarthy in October after McCarthy worked across the aisle to keep the government open.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has already threatened Johnson with a “motion to vacate” should he put any aid for Ukraine on the floor.
“I just told him it’s an absolute no-go,” Greene told reporters of their private conversation last month. “If he funds $60 billion to fund a war in Ukraine to continue killing a whole generation of Ukrainian men, to continue a war that is a losing war … yeah, I would introduce the motion to vacate myself.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who rarely publicly weighs in on the House process, has urged Johnson to take up the bill. The two met privately on Thursday moments before Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., moved ahead on the border-less national security package last week.
“History settles every account,” McConnell said in a statement released shortly after the Senate’s vote. “And today, on the value of American leadership and strength, history will record that the Senate did not blink.”
Splitting the package
Another idea that has been kicking around the Capitol is to split the Ukraine and Israel aid into two bills, try to pass them separately, then possibly repackage them together and send them back to the Senate.
It’s a procedural tool — dubbed “dividing the question” — that Nancy Pelosi and other past speakers have employed when they’ve needed to pass politically complicated legislation. Johnson communicated his likely intention to proceed with this option during a private meeting last week with Senator Rick Scott, R-Fla., who is an ally of Johnson’s.
Dividing the aid package up in two would allow one bipartisan coalition of lawmakers — Republicans and most Democrats — to pass the Israel aid and another coalition — Democrats and more hawkish Republicans — to pass the Ukraine measure. Many conservatives have opposed passing additional Ukraine aid, while many progressives have protested sending more money to Israel as it carries out a deadly military campaign in Gaza.
But this option faces a huge challenge as well. To divide the question, the House Rules Committee needs to sign off first. Just a handful of conservatives on that GOP-led panel, who are likely to oppose that plan, would have the power to derail it if Democrats teamed up with them.
There’s also a question of whether Democrats would agree to help Republicans pass such a rule on the House floor; the minority party typically opposes rule votes, which are a first step to passing most legislation, except in rare circumstances.
Bringing only Israel or Ukraine aid to the floor without the other would fail. Last week, a $17.6 billion Israel standalone aid bill failed which most Democrats opposed because it lacked funding for Ukraine.
Forcing a vote with a ‘discharge petition’
Some moderate members in both parties have floated a “discharge petition” as a way to bypass Johnson’s leadership team entirely and force a vote on the Senate-passed bill.
It’s a rarely used tool, in large part because it requires 218 signatures — a majority of the full chamber — to force a vote. A handful of Republicans would need to join all Democrats in order for the procedural tactic to be successful.
“I’d certainly oppose it and I hope that it would not be considered,” Johnson replied when asked about a potential discharge petition. “There’s a deliberative process and we’re engaged in that and we’ll see how it goes.”
During a Tuesday news conference, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said “all options are on the table” in reference to the discharge petition and that Democratic leaders would soon begin to have those conversations in earnest.
“It’s not too much to ask in the interest of America’s national security that we get an up or down vote and let the House of Representatives actually work its will,” Jeffries said, “as opposed to allowing Donald Trump to work his will and block our national security priorities.”
The last time a discharge petition was used successfully was in 2015, when Democrats joined Republicans to force a vote on reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank under then-Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, who had just announced his retirement from Congress.
Adding the aid to must-pass government funding
Deadlines to fund the government and avert a government shutdown are quickly approaching on March 1 and March 8. Must-pass funding bills could present opportunities for the aid package to hitch a ride as part of a larger deal between Democrats and Republicans.
But that still wouldn’t satisfy GOP demands to pair foreign aid with tougher border security provisions. And Republicans are eyeing the possibility of attaching aid to funding measures with a heavy dose of skepticism.
Schumer’s “usual tactic is to find something that must pass and cram as much stuff into it and push it across the finish line, but I think with a House with just a very thin margin of Republicans, that’s not going to work,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a former GOP whip. “So I think he is setting us up for a year-long continuing resolution and an unknown fate, really,” for the Ukraine and Israel aid bill.
Attaching the House’s own border bill
Johnson and House Republicans have long insisted that any border deal must include the principles in the border enforcement bill they passed last year, known as the Secure the Border Act, or H.R. 2. The bill would bolster the Customs and Border Protection workforce, make technology upgrades at the border, require the homeland security secretary to resume construction of the border wall and limit the ability of migrants to seek asylum, among other things. The Senate, under Democratic control, never took up the bill.
When a group of senators unveiled their bipartisan bill that included border security earlier this month, House Republican leadership panned it as insufficient and demanded the Senate take up H.R. 2 instead.
“That bill contains the necessary components to actually stem the flow of illegals and end the present crisis,” Johnson and his leadership team said in a joint statement.
House Republicans could vote to attach H.R. 2 to the national security supplemental to punt the issue back to their Senate counterparts — where it would be a nonstarter with Democrats.
Doing nothing
Of course, Johnson could choose to ignore the aid bills to Ukraine and Israel altogether.
In contrast with his time as a rank-and-file member of Congress, as speaker, Johnson has indicated that he supports sending lethal assistance to Kyiv but not economic aid, which the Senate-passed bill includes.
And there is also significant support among House Republicans to fund Israel’s war against Hamas, an issue the Democratic-controlled Senate would not split off from aid to Ukraine.
Administration officials warned key lawmakers, including Johnson, in a high-stakes White House meeting with President Joe Biden last month that Ukraine could lose the war in a matter of weeks without additional support from the U.S.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised Senate passage of the package, with no mention of the uphill battle it faces in the House.
“American assistance brings just peace in Ukraine closer and restores global stability, resulting in increased security and prosperity for all Americans and all the free world,” he posted on X.
Some lawmakers, desperate to pass foreign aid as soon as possible, have even considered out-of-the-box measures like temporarily replacing Johnson with a moderate Republican speaker.
“Only four House Republicans are needed to elect a new speaker,” North Carolina Democrat Wiley Nickel said on the House floor on Tuesday. “If Mike Johnson fails to act, I believe there are many Republicans in the House who agree with the 22 Republicans in the Senate on this issue.”