Reuters
U.S. President Joe Biden and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy shake hands across the table [Source: Reuters]
U.S. President Joe Biden and top officials are pushing House Speaker Mike Johnson for a vote on what the White House says is a critically needed funding bill for Ukraine’s war against Russia that is opposed by former President Donald Trump.
Trump’s opposition to the Senate-approved $95.34 billion military aid package for Ukraine and Israel means that it may never be voted on in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. A small group of moderate Republicans said they were working on an alternate version of the bill that might win his support.
The bill will also fund U.S. troops in the Middle East, humanitarian aid in Gaza and defense companies and submarine manufacturing in the United States, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said at the White House on Wednesday in a rare press conference.
He laid responsibility for the bill’s future entirely on Johnson, who controls what bills are taken up for a vote. “If that vote comes to the floor … it will pass on an overwhelming bipartisan basis, just as it did in the Senate,” Sullivan said.
It passed the Senate in a 70-29 vote shortly before dawn on Tuesday.
Johnson indicated again on Wednesday he has no immediate plans to allow the chamber to vote on the package, saying “we’re not going to be forced into action by the Senate.”
Ukrainian troops on the front line are already rationing ammunition, Sullivan told reporters on Wednesday. “Each passing day, each passing week the cost of inaction from the United States … is rising,” Sullivan said.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre accused Johnson of being “confused” by his role. “I think the speaker doesn’t understand what his job is. Put that bill to the floor,” she said.
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