House Speaker Mike Johnson’s unconventional plan to hold separate votes on aid to Israel and Ukraine is aimed primarily at appeasing House Republicans who don’t want to vote for more aid. ‘Ukraine.
But it also draws applause from an unusual place: progressive Democrats who don’t want to vote for more aid to Israel.
“I think it’s a great plan,” said Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who supports aid to Ukraine but will not vote for unconditional aid to Israel. “I think it’s disastrous to give a single cent to the Israeli army without conditions right now. It’s almost immoral.”
Omar is among more than two dozen House progressives who refused to sign a so-called “discharge petition” to force a House vote on the $95.3 billion national security supplement, which was passed by the Senate in February and includes more than $60 billion for Ukraine and Ukraine. more than 14 billion dollars for Israel.
Since the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, the Biden administration, Republican Party and Democratic Senate leaders, as well as most House Democrats, have supported the aid pairing for Ukraine and to Israel, under the theory that the inclusion of Israeli aid would prompt Republicans to approve more aid to Ukraine. Republicans, hoping to avoid having to vote together on aid to Ukraine and Israel, have made numerous attempts to separate the two.
But in the months that followed, Israeli politics shifted dramatically to the left.
Polls have shown that large numbers of Democratic voters view Israel’s war in Gaza – which has killed nearly 34,000 Palestinians – as genocide, while hundreds of thousands of voters cast “non-committal” ballots in the Democratic presidential primaries across the country to protest Biden’s support. for Israel. Many Democratic lawmakers increasingly believe that aid to Israel must be conditioned to prevent American weapons from being used to facilitate possible human rights abuses.
This has led some progressives to refuse to sign on to the Senate-passed bill, even though they support aid to Ukraine.
“I’m opposed to the supplemental bill and I don’t want it to pass,” Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told Business Insider in February.
In the absence of these conditions on aid to Israel, progressive Democrats have increasingly pushed for what their Republican counterparts have long sought: separate votes.
“We lobbied for this, so I’m grateful that it’s happening,” Omar said.
Aid from Israel and Ukraine – as well as a bill to provide aid to Taiwan and another bill including a bill to force the sale of TikTok – are likely to be adopted. But the coalitions required for each will be different: Ukraine will get mostly support from Democrats, while Israel will get more support from the Republican Party.
Rep. Ro Khanna of California, another progressive Democrat who did not sign the discharge petition, noted that he has long supported the idea of single-subject bills — an idea also long favored by House Republicans.
“It’s good for Johnson to stick to that basic principle,” Khanna said. “Let people vote for Taiwan, let them vote for Ukraine, let them vote for Israel.”
Democrats have generally been supportive of Johnson’s plan and may even need to help the Republican president with the procedural steps needed to get it passed. They could also end up protecting him from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s efforts to oust him.
But that doesn’t mean they like the plan as much as progressives do.
“It’s an incredibly complicated process for something that has a simple solution,” said Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, who favors the Senate-passed bill. “How could they overcomplicate the simplest thing possible?”
And it still remains to be seen whether the plan will be implemented. Far-right Republicans grew increasingly angry with Johnson as the week dragged on, with some of them protesting a potential effort to make it harder for lawmakers to call votes for oust the president.
businessinsider
