House Speaker Mike Johnson confirmed Sunday that he would put the stalled supplemental appropriations bill providing aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan on the floor for a vote after the House returns from recess on April 9.
In an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Night with Trey Gowdy,” Johnson said, regarding the supplemental, “When we return after this work period, we’ll be moving a product, but it’s going to, I think, have some important innovations.”
These innovations include rolling in the REPO Act, which would seize frozen Russian assets in the US to pay for Ukraine aid and treat some portion of the funding as a loan.
But it's going to, I think, have some important innovations. The Repo Act. If we could use the seized assets of Russian oligarchs to allow the Ukrainians to fight them, that's just pure poetry. Even President Trump has talked about the loan concept where we set up, we're not just giving foreign aid, we're We're setting it up in a relationship where they can provide it back to us when the time is right. Then, we want to unleash American energy. We want to have natural gas exports that will help unfund Vladimir Putin's war effort there. There's a lot of things that we should do that make more sense and that I think we'll have consensus around. We're putting that product together, and we'll be moving it right after the district work period.
If you’ve been reading my coverage of the supplemental, none of this will be a shock.
Despite the comments claiming that the US just couldn’t do it because “it ain’t fair” or "Putin will be mad," the Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity for Ukrainians Act (REPO) Act, or something like it, is going to happen. Putin’s intransigence, brutality, and megalomania have been put on display for the world to see, and no one likes it. Putin has already confiscated Western assets in Russia, so there is no logical reason not to give him a taste of his own method.
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The story of Johnson’s position is one of a man pushed by a vocal minority of his party into making a rather dumb decision, realizing that he’s down to a one-vote margin, facing the humiliating spectacle of a successful discharge petition, and furiously backtracking.
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Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene has filed a “motion to vacate the chair,” but it isn’t going anywhere. In the interview with Gowdy, Johnson says, “Look, Marjorie Taylor-Greene filed the motion. It's not a privileged motion, so it doesn't move automatically. It's just hanging there. And she's frustrated. She and I exchanged text messages even today. We're going to talk early next week. Marjorie is a friend.”
The only twist is the loan nonsense. This entire idea originated with Donald Trump and can most charitably be viewed as his attempt to keep the viscerally anti-Ukraine Matt Gaetz wing of the Freedom Caucus from savaging him.
There is little chance that the “loan” provision will survive a House floor vote or consideration by the Senate when the Senate's bill is reconciled with Johnson’s version.
All in all, this is an imminently avoidable melodrama that makes no one look particularly bright or courageous. Tying the security supplemental, which has broad bipartisan backing in the House and Senate, to a border security bill opposed by the Senate and saying the supplemental would only pass if it had border security provisions was never a plausible stance. Johnson will have to allow a vote, and the bill will pass on the strength of Democrat votes. This outcome, I’d like to point out, is exactly what would’ve happened if he’d allowed a vote the day it arrived in the House.
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