WASHINGTON -- President Joe Biden said Wednesday he strongly supports a proposal from Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson to provide aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, sending crucial bipartisan support to the effort this week to approve $95 billion in funding for the U.S. allies.
Ahead of potential weekend voting, Johnson, R-La., was facing a choice between potentially losing his job and funding Ukraine. He notified lawmakers earlier Wednesday that he would forge ahead despite growing anger from his right flank. Shortly after Johnson released the funding proposals, Democrat Biden offered his emphatic support for the package.
"The House must pass the package this week, and the Senate should quickly follow," Biden said. "I will sign this into law immediately to send a message to the world: We stand with our friends, and we won't let Iran or Russia succeed."
After agonizing for days over how to proceed on the package, Johnson notified GOP lawmakers Wednesday that he would push to hold votes on three funding packages -- to provide about $61 billion for Ukraine, $26 billion for Israel and $8 billion to allies in the Indo-Pacific -- as well as several other foreign policy proposals in a fourth bill. The plan roughly matches the amounts that the Senate has already approved.
"A strong America is good for the entire world," Johnson told reporters. He asserted he had taken the Senate bill and "improved the process and policy."
Johnson emphasized that the bulk of the funding for Ukraine would go to purchasing weapons and ammunition from U.S. defense manufacturers. The decision to support Ukraine at all has angered populist conservatives in the House and given new energy to a threat to remove him from the speaker's office.
Casting himself as a "Reagan Republican," Johnson told reporters, "Look, history judges us for what we do. This is a critical time right now."
The overall amount of money provided to Ukraine for the purchase of weapons from the U.S. is roughly the same in the House and Senate bills -- $13.8 billion.
The main difference between the two packages is that the House bill provides more than $9 billion in economic assistance to Ukraine in the form of "forgivable loans." The Senate bill included no such provision seeking repayment.
The president would be authorized to set the terms of the loan to Ukraine and also be given the power to cancel it. Congress could override the cancellation but would have to generate enough votes to override a veto, a high bar considering how the two chambers are so evenly divided.
Johnson, as he seeks GOP support for the package, noted that former President Donald Trump has endorsed a "loan concept."
He also noted that the House package includes a requirement for the Biden administration to provide a plan and a strategy to Congress for what it seeks to achieve in Ukraine. The plan would be required within 45 days of the bill being signed into law. House Republicans frequently complain that they have yet to see a strategy from Biden for winning the war.
The bill said the report from the administration must be a multiyear plan that spells out "specific and achievable objectives." It also asked for an estimate of the resources required to achieve the U.S. objectives and a description of the national security implications if the objectives are not met.
The votes on the package are expected Saturday evening, Johnson said. But he faces a treacherous path to get there.
The speaker needs Democratic support on the procedural maneuvers to advance his complex plan of holding separate votes on each part of the aid package. Johnson is trying to squeeze the aid through the House's political divisions on foreign policy by forming unique voting blocks for each issue and then sewing the package back together.
He said House members would also have an opportunity to vote on a raft of foreign policy proposals, including allowing the U.S. to seize frozen Russian central bank assets, placing sanctions on Iran, Russia and China, and potentially banning the video app TikTok if its China-based owner doesn't sell its stake.
Timing on the votes, also, is up in the air -- even as members were scheduled to head home for a one-week recess today.
This is all happening against the backdrop of an extremely slender House majority that Republicans argue should be expanded by voters in November to better their chances of advancing a conservative agenda. The GOP currently has a two-vote majority, meaning that if Democrats do not help keep Johnson in the speaker role, only three Republicans would be needed to wrest his gavel. But two Republicans suddenly become enough after Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., resigns. He was supposed to leave Friday, putting the GOP majority at just one vote, but now is expected to leave once the foreign aid bill passes.
"The congressman has the flexibility to stay and support the aid package on Saturday," his office said on Wednesday.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, N.Y., planned to gather Democrats for a meeting today to discuss the package "as a caucus, as a family, as a team."
"Our top-line commitment is ironclad," he told reporters. "We are going to make sure we stand by our democratic allies in Ukraine, in Israel, in the Indo-Pacific and make sure we secure the humanitarian assistance necessary to surge into Gaza and other theaters of war throughout the world."
ISRAEL DIVISIONS
Crucial to the potential for Democratic support, the House proposal would keep intact roughly $9 billion in humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza and other conflict zones. However, progressive Democrats are opposed to providing Israel with funding that could be used for its campaign into Gaza that has killed thousands of civilians.
The amount of money dedicated to replenishing Israel's missile defense systems totals about $4 billion in the House and Senate bills. An additional $2.4 billion for current U.S. military operations in the regions is also the same in both bills.
Some conservatives have been critical of the aid for Gaza. At the end of the day, though, Johnson risked losing critical Democratic support for the package if Republicans had excluded it.
Meanwhile, the overall amount of money and the investments in the two bills towards countering China and ensuring a strong deterrence in the Indo-Pacific is about the same with a quarter of funds used to replenish weapons and ammunition systems that had been provided to Taiwan.
The top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, said in a statement of support that the three funding funding proposals for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan "mirror" the $95 billion foreign aid package that the Senate passed in February.
Meanwhile, the threat to oust Johnson from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia, gained steam this week. One other Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, said he was joining Greene and called for Johnson to resign. Other GOP lawmakers have openly complained about Johnson's leadership.
"You are seriously out of step with Republicans by continuing to pass bills dependent on Democrats," Greene wrote on the social platform X, formerly Twitter. "Everyone sees through this."
In an effort to satisfy conservatives, Johnson said he would hold a separate vote on a border security package that contains most of a bill that was passed by House Republicans last year. That bill has already been rejected by the Democratic-controlled Senate, and conservatives quickly denounced the plan to hold a separate vote on it as insufficient. Rep. Chip Roy of Texas called the strategy a "complete failure."
At the same time, the speaker's office was tidying up after Johnson said on Fox News that he and Trump were "100% united" on the big agenda items, when in fact the Republican presidential nominee who had just hosted the House leader in a show of support opposes much overseas aid as well as a separate national security surveillance bill.
Johnson told CNN on Wednesday that he thought Trump, if elected president, would be "strong enough that he could enter the world stage to broker a peace deal" between Ukraine and Russia.
Yet Johnson's push to pass the foreign aid comes amid growing alarm in Washington at the precarious situation in Ukraine. Johnson, delaying an excruciating process, had waited for over two months to bring up the measure since the Senate passed it in February.
In the House Intelligence Committee, the Republican chairman, Ohio Rep. Mike Turner, and top Democrat, Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, issued a joint statement Tuesday saying, "The United States must stand against Putin's war of aggression now as Ukraine's situation on the ground is critical."
The House's version of the aid bill pushes the Biden administration to provide long-range ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile Systems) to Ukraine, which could be used to target Russian supply lines.
The U.S. has resisted sending those weapons out of concerns Moscow would consider them escalatory, since they could reach deeper into Russia and Russian-held territory. The House legislation would also allow the president to decline to send the ATACMS if it is against national security interests, but Congress would have to be notified.
Still, there was acknowledgement in Washington that Johnson could soon be out of the speaker's office.
"This is a chance to do the right thing," Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican, said this week. "If you pay for it, you'll be known in history as the man who did the right thing even though it cost him a job."
Information for this article was contributed by Stephen Groves and Lisa Mascaro of The Associated Press and by Marianna Sotomayor and Leigh Ann Caldwell of The Washington Post.