Senate GOP annoyed by new Speaker’s Ukraine move

Senate Republicans did not appreciate Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) attempt to pour cold water on their effort to pass $60 billion in funding for Ukraine and are now ratcheting up pressure on him to bring the bill to the House floor.

Johnson took the unusual step of panning the Senate bill Monday evening, moments before senators took three crucial procedural votes to advance the legislation.

Twenty minutes before the votes were to begin, Johnson released a statement declaring senators “should have gone back to the drawing border to include real border security provisions that would actually help end the ongoing catastrophe.”

It was a rare example of the top Republican leader in the House meddling with the top Republican leader in the Senate’s effort to pass a bill.

Some Republican senators thought it crossed a line.

“I don’t know why he has to comment on it at all. There’s this process where we pass things and send it over, and they pass things and send it over. And then you take it up,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (N.D.), one of 22 Senate Republicans who voted for the emergency defense spending package.

“I do think it’s a little bit bad form,” he added. “The Speaker hasn’t traditionally been that strident.”

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) is seen going to votes at the Capitol on January 23, 2024. (Allison Robbert)

Cramer, who served in the House from 2013-19, said he thought Johnson taking a shot at the bill right before a vote was “disrespectful” to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), given how hard he has worked to build support for it.

“It’s quite disrespectful to Mitch; it’s quite disrespectful to Republicans in the Senate. This is not a partisan issue for us. It is for them, because everything is for them,” he said of his House GOP colleagues.

In the end, 22 Senate Republicans backed the bill in a 70-29 vote, with one senator not voting.

Cramer said he wants to cut the new Speaker some “slack,” recognizing he’s under tremendous pressure from former President Trump to go on political offense all the time.

“It’s a symptom of what he’s got to do to sort of keep in the game,” he said.

One Senate Republican aide noted the Senate bill picked up five more Republican votes after Johnson “tried to kill it,” suggesting the Speaker’s disparaging comments had galvanized some Republican votes.

Cramer was one of the five Republicans who voted for the bill for the first time on the question of final passage. The other Republicans who joined him in swinging from “no” to “yes” on the final vote were Sens. Mike Crapo (Idaho), James E. Risch (Idaho), John Boozman (Ark.) and John Hoeven (N.D.).

A spokesman for Johnson said the senators’ grumbling over the Speaker’s statement was “not surprising” given their policy differences.

“It’s not surprising that some Senators who support the foreign aid bill didn’t appreciate the Speaker’s comments of opposition, just as he’s less than enthused about a minority of Republican Senators telling the House majority what to do. But as he’s said all along, national security starts at our own border. The House will work its will,” Johnsons’s spokesman told The Hill.

McConnell has been careful not to give the new Speaker advice on various issues.

He deferred to Johnson on the length of a short-term funding measure to avoid a government shutdown in January or early February and also went along with the Speaker’s plan to punt the fiscal 2024 appropriations bills past Christmas, even though McConnell’s allies say he would have preferred to wrap up the work in 2023.

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He was also careful not to give Johnson or his predecessor, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), any advice on moving forward with impeachment proceedings against President Biden, even though members of his leadership team argued that impeaching the president with shaky evidence would be a political “loser.”

On Tuesday morning, he issued a statement that did not mention Johnson. But it did warn that history would judge Congress harshly if lawmakers gave Russia a decisive advantage by derailing new U.S. military support to Ukraine.

“History settles every account. And today, on the value of American leadership and strength, history will record that the Senate did not blink,” he said, emphasizing that senators who voted for the bill did their part to defend the nation’s interests.

Asked about his colleagues’ grumbling about Johnson bashing the Senate bill just before the final votes. Senate Republican John Thune (S.D.) said, “I try not to interfere in their court.”

“It was important for the Senate to start the process.”

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), a member of McConnell’s leadership team, said Tuesday that House Republicans would face political repercussions this year if they fail to act on the Senate bill and let Russian President Vladimir Putin turn the tide of the war.

He reiterated McConnell’s admonishment that lawmakers will be judged by future historians if they allow the funding package to languish long enough to cost Ukraine the war, which could then embolden America’s adversaries in other parts of the world.

“Now the Speaker is going to have to decide where he wants to be in this chapter of history and whether or not just doing nothing is an option,” he said. “We’ll see what he does.”

Tillis warned that if Ukraine can’t fight off a new Russian offensive because the GOP-controlled House doesn’t pass more military aid, it would hurt Republicans heading into the election.

“If Putin wins, Republicans will lose. If there is a definitive change in the posture” on the battlefield, “between now and November, there’s no doubt” of that, he said.

Tillis said if “there’s a resounding defeat” of Ukrainian forces, or Russians “take a major city or they’re knocking on the doors of Kyiv,” it would have “huge political consequences.”

He said under such a scenario, any Republicans responsible for stopping the flow of new support for Ukraine “are going to have to answer for that to the people back home.”

Johnson, however, has argued for months that securing the U.S. southern border is a national security need that should take precedence.

He slapped at what he called “the Senate’s foreign aid bill” for being “silent on the most pressing issue facing our country.”

GOP senators acknowledge Johnson could face a motion to vacate the Speakership — a punishment that befell McCarthy — if he brings the Senate bill straight to the House floor.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) expressed disbelief about the growing influence of isolationists within the GOP.

“It would be quite a world if the Democrat Party becomes the party of national security,” he said.

House Democrats are discussing the option of gathering a majority of signatures in the chamber to force the Senate’s emergency defense spending bill to the floor of Johnson refuses to bring it up for a vote.

Mychael Schnell contributed reporting

Updated: 9:26 a.m.