Lawmakers point fingers as GOP fighting endangers Ukraine aid

The House appears to be moving further and further away from approving a deal that would include new assistance to Ukraine — even as the Senate inches closer to an agreement.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is demanding that any new aid for Kyiv be accompanied by tougher policies on border migration; House Democrats have rejected those policy changes out of hand; and both sides are digging in, even as negotiators in the upper chamber say they’re on the cusp of a hard-fought deal.

The dispute has led to plenty of finger pointing, with Democrats accusing Republicans of abandoning a beleaguered ally at the expense of democracy abroad, Republicans accusing Democrats of promoting open borders at the cost of national security at home, and neither side appearing ready to budge.

The Republican appetite for another massive round of military assistance for Ukraine has waned dramatically since Russia’s invasion almost two years ago, raising questions about whether the new Speaker — who’s already facing threats to his gavel from disgruntled conservatives — would even bring such a bill to the floor.

It has all diminished the odds that congressional efforts to help Ukraine will succeed ahead of a presidential election likely to pit President Biden against former President Trump, the runaway favorite for GOP’s presidential nomination.

The former president has made clear he opposes any Ukraine-border agreement that emerges from the Senate, pressuring House GOP leaders to do the same. And Johnson, who had endorsed Trump early in the GOP primary and says he speaks with Trump “frequently” about the border talks, is already throwing cold water on the emerging Senate package. 

Johnson and House Republicans are demanding the inclusion of the major elements of their border security bill, H.R. 2, which they passed through the lower chamber last year, including hundreds of miles of new border wall construction and the return of Trump’s “remain in Mexico” policy for would-be migrants — non-starters for Democrats in the White House and Congress alike. 

“He wants to add H.R. 2 to the bill, and that’s not what an emergency supplemental is about,” Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) said. “Honestly, I do think there’s more of an appetite for policy changes than maybe some people think. But Ukraine’s running out of shells. We’ve got to help these guys.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been lobbying around the globe for more support, including visits to Washington in December and another to Davos this month. But the effort has so far failed to bear fruit either in the European Union, where a proposed aid package has been blocked by Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister who’s a close Russian ally, or the U.S., where Republicans on and off of Capitol Hill have soured on the notion of sending billions more dollars to Ukraine. 

Highlighting the GOP’s change of heart, a test vote last September on $300 million in Ukraine aid was opposed by a majority of the House Republican Conference, failing the so-called “Hastert rule” and sending a warning signal to GOP leaders. More recently, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has threatened to launch the effort to boot Johnson from the Speakership if he stages a vote on a Ukraine package that doesn’t meet the conservatives’ standard for cracking down on southern migration. 

“I just told him it’s an absolute no-go,” Greene told reporters last week in the Capitol. 

The early reluctance from House Republicans to embrace legislation that’s expected to win support from many GOP senators, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), is infuriating Democrats, who maintain that Republicans simply don’t want to address the border crisis before the elections, since it might hand Biden a victory on an issue that’s among his chief vulnerabilities. 

“It’s very clear that House Republicans don’t want a solution,” said Rep. Veronica Escobar (D), who represents a Texas border district anchored around El Paso. 

“They keep pointing to H.R. 2. H.R. 2’s a fantasy,” she continued. “It relies on Mexico to accept every single migrant that is expelled from the U.S. It’s not real. It’s never happened; it never will.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday that Senate negotiators are “in a good place” but have “more work to do” ironing out “some outstanding items.” He also took a shot at the conservatives in both chambers who have joined Trump’s opposition to any deal, accusing them of “naked partisanship.” 

“These hard-right saboteurs talk on and on about the need to fix the border, but now they don’t actually want to see a bipartisan solution on the border — which is the only kind of solution, of course, that can pass,” Schumer said.

As the debate evolves, some Democrats are turning their frustrations toward their allies in the White House, saying Biden created a minefield of his own making with his initial proposal to link more Ukraine aid with anything related to domestic border security.

“I think the president made a mistake in combining them,” Rep. Juan Vargas (D-Calif.) said. “I think Israel would have passed almost unanimously. I think Ukraine would have passed easily. And I think we could have come to an agreement pretty easily on the border, if it wasn’t tied to all these other things. 

“Now I think it creates a lot of uncertainty.”

Other Democrats rejected that idea, saying Biden included a border component only “because Republicans would not let Ukraine funding go ahead on its own,” in the words of Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-Calif.). 

“They are the impediment; their members are the ones who are off the reservation saying we can’t support Ukraine,” she added. 

However the saga ends, even the most frustrated Ukraine supporters acknowledge that Johnson is in unique control of the outcome. 

“If he can move, we can get something done, and I think the overwhelming majority of the members of the House will vote for it,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks (N.Y.), senior Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee. “But if he holds himself hostage — or allows himself to be a hostage to the MAGAs — then we have a problem.”