Mike Johnson Rejects Democrat Ploy to Force Floor Vote on Ukraine Aid

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) speaks at a roundtable on the southern border at the U.S. Capitol, on Jan. 31, 2024. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he’s opposed to a Democrat-led procedural maneuver called a discharge petition that would force a floor vote in the House on a $95 billion emergency defense spending bill that includes aid for Ukraine.

“I certainly oppose it, and I hope that it would not be considered,” Mr. Johnson told Politico on Tuesday, referring to the discharge petition that every House Democrat has reportedly signed onto and that some Republicans may be persuaded to join.

The GOP has a 219–212 majority in the House, so if all Democrats were to support a discharge petition, only four Republicans would need to sign on for the gambit to work and force a floor vote on Ukraine aid without Mr. Johnson’s backing.

The speaker has said before that House Republicans would draft their own legislation that would include border security provisions.

“The House has to work its will on this. There’s a deliberative process, and we’re engaged in that and we'll see how it goes,” Mr. Johnson told Politico, reinforcing his earlier remarks that Republicans would propose provisions to include in the supplemental that would bolster border security.

Mr. Johnson’s expression of opposition to a Democrat-led discharge petition comes after the Senate passed the $95 billion national security supplemental in a predawn vote on Feb. 13.

That vote came less than a week after the collapse of a $118 billion version of the supplemental spending deal, which included some border security provisions that many Republicans said wouldn’t have done much to stem the flow of illegal immigration into the country.

While it’s unclear whether there would be any House Republican support for a discharge petition, some in the GOP have said that a floor vote would likely lead to the Ukraine aid supplemental passing.

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) expressed support for Mr. Johnson’s efforts to block the supplemental in remarks on “The John Fredericks Show” on Tuesday.

Mr. Biggs said he thinks that if Democrats were to succeed in their ploy to force a floor vote, “it would pass—let’s just be frank about that.”

New Security Supplemental

The new supplemental includes $60 billion for Ukraine, $14.1 billion for Israel in its war against Hamas, $9.2 billion in humanitarian assistance for Gaza, and $4.8 billion for Taiwan and partners in the Indo-Pacific to counter the Chinese communist regime.

Before the vote, Mr. Johnson criticized the bipartisan Senate proposal for failing to include tougher border security measures, a key priority for Republican voters amid record numbers of illegal border crossings.

“In the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters. America deserves better than the Senate’s status quo,” Mr. Johnson said in a statement on Monday, before the measure cleared the upper chamber in a 70–29 vote early Tuesday morning, with 22 Republicans joining nearly all Democrats to vote in favor.

Later on Tuesday, Mr. Johnson faced questions from reporters on Capitol Hill, who pressed him to declare whether his opposition to the Senate proposal means he opposes funding for Ukraine amid its war against Russia.

“National security begins with border security,” he replied, adding that this has been his position for months amid negotiations over a spending package that includes foreign aid.

Mr. Johnson is facing pressure from Democrats and some Republicans to advance the supplemental.

Floor Vote Pressure

President Joe Biden on Tuesday called on Mr. Johnson to bring the supplemental to a floor vote in the House.

“I urge Speaker Johnson to bring it to the floor immediately,” President Biden said in remarks delivered at the White House.

“There’s no question that if the Senate bill was put on the floor in the House of Representatives, it would pass,” the president added. “The speaker knows that. So, I call on the speaker to let the full House speak its mind and not allow minority or most extreme voices in the House to block this bill even from being voted on.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who voted to pass the supplemental in the upper chamber, told Politico that he, too, would like to see the legislation put to a vote in the House.

“We’ve heard all kinds of rumors about whether the House supports Ukraine or doesn’t. It seems to me that the easy way to solve that would be to vote,” Mr. McConnell told the outlet on Tuesday. “And I hope the Speaker will find a way to allow the House to work its will on the issue of Ukraine aid and the other parts of the bill, as well.”

Mr. McConnell did not address the matter of a discharge petition, which House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) suggested on Tuesday would be one of the possibilities as he vowed to “use every available legislative tool” to bring the supplemental to a floor vote.

In a dear colleague letter to fellow Democrats, Mr. Jeffries argued that failure to support Ukraine in its war against Russia puts the lives of American military service members at risk because, he argued, a victorious Russia might be emboldened to attack a NATO ally and draw U.S. forces into the conflict.

Even though House Democrats only need four Republicans to join them in backing a discharge petition (assuming all Democrats support one), that could prove to be too tall an order. That’s because joining a discharge petition is seen as a major rebuke to House leadership. The last successful use of a discharge petition took place about a decade ago.

In 2015, a discharge petition was used to force a vote on a bill to re-authorize the Export-Import Bank of the United States.