The House voted on Friday to advance a $95 billion foreign-aid package through a key procedural hurdle with support from a majority of Democrats and Republicans.
The House voted 316-94 to push forward the package with support for Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific region. House Democrats voted 165-39 and Republicans voted 151-55 to set up debate on the legislation and facilitate the foreign-aid package’s eventual passage Saturday afternoon.
The foreign-aid legislation is split up into three separate bills and paired with a fourth legislative package that includes a TikTok divestment provision and a bill allowing the U.S. to seize Russian assets.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) is putting his speakership on the line to get the package passed over objections from Republican hardliners such as Representative Thomas Massie (R., Ky.) and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.). Massie and Greene have threatened to use a motion to vacate to give Johnson the ouster in the same way Republican hardliners booted former speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) last fall.
“My philosophy is you do the right thing and you let the chips fall where they may. If I operated out of fear of a motion to vacate, I would never be able to do my job,” Johnson said on Wednesday. He appears to have support among the rank-and-file House Republicans and Democrats desperate to get more foreign aid into Ukraine and Gaza.
Asked Thursday who he had in mind to succeed Johnson if the push to oust the current speaker is successful, Massie told National Review “I’ve got dozens of candidates in mind, dozens,” but declined to elaborate.
Johnson’s right flank strongly opposes additional aid to Ukraine and the Democratic party’s progressive wing opposes further U.S. support for Israel’s war effort against Hamas. Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel last weekend renewed bipartisan calls for congress to finalize a foreign aid package for U.S. allies.
President Joe Biden issued a statement earlier this week expressing strong support for the national-security package and said he would sign it immediately. The House package strongly resembles the $95 billion senate national-security supplemental passed in February as one piece of legislation instead of multiple bills.
The revised TikTok divestment bill received support from Senator Maria Cantwell (D., Wash.), chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, who applauded the bill’s extended time period for Chinese company ByteDance to divest from TikTok.
Last month, the House passed TikTok divesture legislation with a six month deadline for ByteDance to sell the company to a U.S. buyer or face a TikTok ban. The new legislation adds three months to the divesture period.
“Extending the divestment period is necessary to ensure there is enough time for a new buyer to get a deal done,” Cantwell said on Wednesday. TikTok blasted the House for packaging the divestment package with foreign aid.
“It is unfortunate that the House of Representatives is using the cover of important foreign and humanitarian assistance to once again jam through a ban bill,” a TikTok spokesman previously told NR.
The previous TikTok legislation drew bipartisan support because of national security concerns surrounding ByteDance’s suspected ties to the Chinese Communist Party.