WASHINGTON (CN) — The House is on track this week to approve a billion-dollar foreign aid bill after Republicans and Democrats came together to bring the legislation up for a vote in the full chamber.
The sweeping measure, which includes roughly $95 billion in assistance for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, has not yet been made law — the House on Friday voted 316-94 to approve a procedural rule that sets the legislation up for a pair of final votes on Saturday.
But the wide margin of victory for the rule vote was a rare show of bipartisanship for the lower chamber which often finds itself deeply divided along party lines.
The move towards finalizing the long-awaited foreign aid package may however prove a pyrrhic victory for the Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who has spearheaded the effort despite facing sharp criticism and a possible ouster from members of his own party.
Although a majority of House Republicans voted in favor of the rule Friday, Johnson ultimately had to rely on Democrats to get the procedural measure across the finish line. More than 50 Republican lawmakers voted against moving ahead with the aid package.
Conservative lawmakers said Friday they would not be moved by Johnson’s efforts to make the aid legislation more palpable to Republicans, such as teeing up Ukraine and Israel funding as separate votes or including language forcing social media platform TikTok to divest from its parent company.
Speaking on the House floor, Texas Representative Chip Roy contended that those measures were meant to distract from the fact that Johnson’s measure was effectively the same as a similar aid package the Senate passed in February.
“This was all precooked,” he said. “It is a process predesigned to achieve the desired predetermined outcome.”
Roy and other conservative Republicans have also complained that the House version of the aid bill does not include stricter border security language.
“Speaker Johnson said in January that if President Biden wants a supplemental spending bill focused on national security, it better begin with defending America’s national security,” the Texas lawmaker said. “We want to get the border closed and secured first. To that I say amen — and where is that, Speaker Johnson?”
If the House passes Johnson’s aid bill this weekend, it is sure to escalate conservative rage at the speaker, who already faces a pending motion to vacate filed last month by Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Speaking to Newsmax Thursday night, Greene said that Republicans had lost control of the House under Speaker Johnson, arguing that Democrats had “crossed the Rubicon” to support his foreign aid bill.
“We have completely lost confidence in his leadership,” she said of the speaker.
Several House lawmakers, including Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie and Arizona Representative Paul Gosar, have said they would back an effort to oust Johnson. Greene has yet to bring her motion up for a vote but could pull a procedural lever at any time to force the House to consider it.
Democrats meanwhile were quick to take credit for advancing the aid package, which they have framed as vital to securing the U.S.’s democratic allies abroad.
“House Democrats have once again cleared the way for legislation that is important to the American people to be processed and considered on the House floor,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries during a press conference Friday.
Jeffries bashed conservative Republicans for what he called “gamesmanship, partisanship and brinksmanship” in their efforts to stall the aid bill from becoming law.
The minority leader also sidestepped questions about whether Democrats would step in to support Johnson if he faces a motion to vacate the speakership, although he has previously suggested that they would.
“At the appropriate time, as House Democrats, we will have a conversation about how to deal with any hypothetical motion to vacate,” Jeffries told reporters, “which, at this point, hasn’t been noticed.”
Johnson is the second Republican speaker this Congress to face a threat to his job from his own caucus members. Conservatives last fall successfully ousted then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy amid anger at his willingness to reach across the aisle on the debt ceiling and federal budget. Democrats at the time voted in favor of removing McCarthy from his post.
The speaker’s ouster kicked off a month-long intra-party leadership crisis that saw the caucus fail to coalesce around three different speaker candidates before settling on Johnson — a staunch conservative who has nonetheless drawn the ire of his fellow party members.
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