Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the congressional caucus affilation of Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). We regret the error.
Days after the Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200 Israelis by Hamas, President Joe Biden went on national television to ask Congress for $106 billion in emergency supplemental appropriations for security assistance to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan.
Congress immediately began hearings and discussions. However, the two houses and two parties weren’t on the same page. Even within its own conference House Republicans split on what to fund and what not to fund. Consequently, the urgent aid package remained essentially stalled for six months, entangled in a massive snare of differences. Resolution was finally achieved last week (and this) when the House and then the Senate passed the same compromise package and sent it on to the president.
Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) was elected House Speaker last Oct. 25 following the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). Known as an isolationist, Johnson was inclined to oppose most of President Biden’s multi-pronged foreign aid request. In May of 2022 he was one of only 57 Republicans to vote against a $40 billion military assistance package for Ukraine.
However, he was eager to move on Biden’s request for assistance to Israel. Johnson urged House Appropriations Committee Chair Kay Granger (R-Texas) to introduce the measure on Nov. 1, and called it up on the House floor the next day, where it easily passed, 226-96. But the Democratic-controlled Senate was not buying into a piecemeal approach to security assistance. On Nov. 14, the Senate voted 51-48 to table consideration of the House-passed Israel aid bill.
Instead, the Senate continued to work on Biden’s omnibus package. The major obstacle was addressing Republican demands that international assistance be tied to security enhancements along the U.S. southern border. Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and James Lankford (R-Okla.) were charged with leading negotiations with White House officials. When they finally came to agreement in early February, former President Trump declared he opposed any border bill this year. Trump wanted that accomplishment saved for his second term.
Consequently, the Senate rejected a motion to consider the bipartisan border compromise. Instead, on Feb. 13, the Senate adopted a new substitute, without any border security language. It attached the new legislation to an unrelated veterans bill (H.R. 815). When that bill arrived in the House, Speaker Johnson declared it “dead on arrival,” and held the bill at the Speaker’s desk until last week’s breakthrough.
What brought Speaker Johnson’s change of heart, notwithstanding the retention of aid to Ukraine and the absence of any southern border provisions? By most accounts, since at least early January the Speaker had been rethinking aloud the need to assist Ukraine in its deteriorating military position. After numerous private intelligence briefings and endless conversations with members and groups in his own conference, his opposition changed to support. Especially influential in his conversion were the expertise and advice of three national security committee chairmen, aka, “the three Mikes:” Mike McCaul (R-Texas), Foreign Affairs; Mike Turner (R-Ohio), Select Intelligence; and Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), Armed Services.
Among the forces working against the Speaker, in addition to extreme policy divisions within his own ranks, were two concessions made by former Speaker McCarthy to win election at the beginning of this Congress. One was a House rule change to allow any member to offer a privileged motion on the floor to “vacate the chair,” i.e., remove the Speaker from power. The other was to place three of the hard-right members on the House Rules Committee.
As Johnson became more public about moving on Ukraine aid, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R- Ga.) introduced a motion to vacate which she said she would offer if the Speaker brought up a Ukraine bill. He did, and she hasn’t, yet. The three members put on the Rules Committee are Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), and Chip Roy (R-Texas). All three let it be known they would oppose any special rule in the Rules Committee that included Ukraine aid.
When the Speaker’s special rule package providing for separate votes on the Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan security assistance bills was voted on in the Rules Committee last Thursday, the three made good on their threat. The rule was nevertheless adopted, 9-3, with all four Democrats joining with the remaining five Republicans in favor of bringing the bill to the House floor — a precursor of the substantial bipartisan floor votes on the rule and all three security measures Johnson had divided into separate bills. The rule also provided for rejoining the measures, once passed, into a single bill — H.R. 815, for presentation to the Senate.
Quiet conversations are reportedly going on in some corners of the Republican Conference about both changing the vacate rule and removing from the Rules Committee those Republican members who oppose their own leadership on special rules. It is, after all, called “the Speaker’s committee.”
Back in the early-1990s, House Republicans, in their quest to win majority control of the House, were drilled on a simple leadership mantra: “Listen, learn, help, and lead.” Speaker Mike Johnson has gained the respect of his conference, not only by listening for hours on end to his colleagues’ advice and complaints, but also by quickly learning the difference between representing only your congressional district and, as Speaker, representing the House and your country.
Yes, there is a chance he could be ousted from the speakership by his colleagues if Democrats oppose him, as happened with McCarthy. But the odds seem better now, than before last week, that he will survive any motion to vacate his chair.
Don Wolfensberger is a 28-year congressional staff veteran, culminating as majority chief-of-staff of the House Rules Committee in 1995. He is author of, “Congress and the People: Deliberative Democracy on Trial” (2000), and, “Changing Cultures in Congress: From Fair Play to Power Plays” (2018). The views expressed are solely his own.