In Unusual Vote, Democrats Rescue Measure to
Allow Vote on Ukraine Bill
A resolution to pave the way for the foreign aid
package was on track to die in committee amid Republican opposition when
Democrats stepped in to save it.
Catie
Edmondson
By Catie
Edmondson
Reporting
from Washington
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/18/us/politics/democrats-vote-ukraine-bill.html
Published
April 18, 2024
Updated
April 19, 2024, 12:35 a.m. ET
House
Republicans took a critical step late Thursday night toward bringing up the
long-stalled foreign aid bill for Ukraine and Israel, after being forced to
rely on Democratic votes to move a plan to consider it out of a key committee
and onto the floor.
The 9-to-3
vote in the critical Rules Committee was an early step in the convoluted
process the House is expected to go through over the next couple of days to
approve the $95 billion aid package. It reflected the extent of far-right anger
over Speaker Mike Johnson’s plan to push through the legislation over the
opposition of ultraconservative Republicans, and underscored how heavily the
speaker will have to rely on Democrats to push it across the finish line.
In a spasm
of anger, three far-right Republicans on the panel, which controls what
legislation comes to the House floor, refused to back the rule needed to bring
up the foreign aid bill, putting it on track to die in committee. But Democrats
on the panel stepped in to save it in an extraordinary breach of custom.
All
Democrats voted to advance the plan out of committee.
The Rules
Committee has traditionally been an organ of the speaker, and legislation is
typically advanced to the floor in a straight party-line vote.
Democrats
will all but certainly have to provide the votes on the House floor to approve
the rule and allow the aid package to be brought up, lending their support in
an yet another unorthodox vote in the face of Republican opposition.
The rule is
critical to Mr. Johnson’s plan for pushing the foreign aid package through the
House, because it would allow separate votes on aid to Israel and aid to
Ukraine, which are supported by different coalitions, but then would fold them
together without requiring lawmakers ever to cast an up-or-down vote on the
entire bill.
The group
of far-right lawmakers who sought to block the measure in committee won their
seats on the Rules panel as part of a concession made last year by the speaker
at the time, Kevin McCarthy, who had to haggle with ultraconservatives who
opposed electing him to the top post and agreed to back him only after he
granted them critical leverage. They refused to support the measure to bring up
the foreign aid package because it would not allow a vote on severe border
security provisions they have said should be prioritized over aiding Ukraine.
That
amounted to a remarkable act of rebellion, and left Democrats to bail out the
speaker and push the measure through the panel.
Mr. Johnson
earlier said he expected a House vote to pass the aid package on Saturday.
“I’d rather
send bullets to Ukraine than American boys,” he said in an interview on Newsmax
on Thursday night. “We don’t want to have boots on the ground, and we can
prevent that by allowing them to hold Putin at bay.”
Catie
Edmondson covers Congress for The Times. More about Catie Edmondson
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