The Daily Signal - Is Upheaval In House Coming After Passage of $60 Billion for Ukraine?

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

The House passed a four-bill $95 billion foreign aid package over the weekend that includes $60 billion in additional aid for Ukraine. The bill could cost House Speaker Mike Johnson his job.  The aid package passed in a 311-112 vote with the unanimous support of Democrats and 101 Republicans voting in favor of the bill. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., threatened to introduce a motion to remove Johnson, R-La., from his position as speaker if he brought the funding for Ukraine to the House floor for a vote.  “I think she's looking at the totality of what's come across the floor over the past few months, and she is expressing extreme disappointment with that,” Ryan Walker, executive vice president of Heritage Action for America, says of Greene. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation, of which Heritage Action is the grassroots arm.) Greene left Washington at the end of last week without introducing the motion to vacate the speaker but said during an interview Sunday on Fox News that she still planned to try to oust Johnson.  “Mike Johnson’s speakership is over,” Greene said on “Sunday Morning Futures,” adding, “He needs to do the right thing—to resign and allow us to move forward in a controlled process. If he doesn’t do so, he will be vacated.”  Less than one year after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted from the role, Capitol Hill is bracing for the potential of another speakership battle when Congress returns to Washington next week.  Walker joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain the reason for the sharp divide in Congress over the foreign aid package and the likelihood Johnson will face removal as speaker. Walker also explains where Congress is getting the money to send to Ukraine.  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, April 23rd. I'm Virginia Allen. The House passed a four-bill $95 billion foreign aid package over the weekend. Within the bill is $60 billion in additional funding for Ukraine. Well, initially, we had seen opposition from House Speaker Mike Johnson back in 2022 to funding for Ukraine. but Speaker Mike Johnson did bring this new bill to the floor of the House for a vote and voted in support of it. Joining us today to explain the change and what exactly is happening in Congress and where this money is coming from for Ukraine is Ryan Walker, the Executive Vice President of Heritage Action for America. Ryan also discusses efforts from Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia to remove Mike Johnson from the position of Speaker. Stay with us for that conversation up next. As conservatives, sometimes it feels like we're constantly on defense against bad ideas.

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President of Heritage Action for America, Ryan Walker. Ryan, thanks for being back with us. Thanks for having me on. Over the weekend, the House passed a $60 billion funding bill specifically for Ukraine. This was inside a larger $95 billion foreign aid package. Was this vote largely along party lines for this $60 billion for Ukraine? So it actually turns out that a majority of the Republican conference voted no. and there were more Democrats supporting passage of the Ukraine piece than there were Republicans. And I think that speaks volumes to where the Republican conference is and some of the decisions that came about as they put this on the floor.

Okay. But there obviously were Republicans who did vote for it. It got that support from some Republicans. How much money at this point has the U.S. sent to Ukraine? It will be over $175 billion in total. We've sent prior to this package going over, the total was $113 billion. This is obviously an additional 60, and there are other pots of money within the appropriations process that send another set of millions over there. The main criticism that I have heard from conservatives and from those Republicans who voted against that additional $60 billion for Ukraine is pointing out our border is open.

And right now, Congress has not done anything to secure that border. and yet we're sending money to Ukraine to secure their border. Is this a fair criticism? Well, I think it is. It's certainly a misprioritization of the domestic needs of this country. We've had 13 million people come into the country since President Biden was sworn into office. Many of them should not be eligible for entry. They have been given carve-outs in the asylum and the parole system from this administration,

and it's an unfettered access to the United States. So this idea that we are going to spend $175 billion to secure someone else's sovereignty, I think is an insult to the American people. We saw that, as we've talked about, this is one of several installments of aid money that's going over to Ukraine. And we actually saw back in May of 2022 that the House, when they passed that $40 billion aid bill for Ukraine, that then just representative Mike Johnson, voted against that. Well, now he's in this position of being Speaker, and he first off brought it to the floor, this new package to the floor for a vote, and then he voted for it.

What changed for Speaker Mike Johnson? Yeah, I think we've all thought a lot about that. I think the American people are thinking about that. I think that there are different considerations when you are Speaker, not to provide him with an excuse necessarily for putting this on the floor because I disagree fundamentally with what leadership decided to do with this package. We and Heritage Action disagrees. But there is a decision-making tree that changes when you become speaker. And I think that there are all sorts of considerations. The election is something that Mike Johnson likes to point to very often to say, you know,

if we didn't do this, the American people would have X, Y, and Z, you know, taking their opinions to the ballot box and those sorts of things. What I think is missing is a connection to his constituency and to the base of the Republican Party, which are fundamentally opposed to what they've done. Is there precedent for this for whether it's a Republican or a Democrat speaker bringing a bill, a piece of legislation to the floor for a vote where there is a lot of disagreement within the party? It's certainly rare. It's been done before, but it's certainly rare. Something that is unique in this situation is that Mike Johnson, in the Rules Committee, a committee, made up of members appointed by the Speaker, him or herself.

He had to get Democrat votes in committee. In fact, all Democrats joined with five Republicans to pass it nine to three out of the Rules Committee. And that since they started recording votes in the Rules Committee has not happened. And so that was historic. And that's why Heritage Action weighed in key voting the rule. We felt like there was beyond the policy considerations and lines against the policy itself. We knew that the conference wasn't in unity. They did not share a vision for how we should go about this question.

And it didn't align certainly with where the Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action are on the issues. And why has Heritage Action and the Heritage Foundation spoken out in opposition? And what are the specific reasons for this not passing the keybook? Yeah, listen, we're $34 trillion in debt. We're adding a trillion dollars to our national debt every three, three and a half months. We're in an untenable situation, a situation where very quickly we're going to be on the precipice of a debt cliff that we cannot cut our way out of. We cannot cut spending enough or raise taxes enough to come out of that hole. The only way to get out of it is by growing the economy by a clip we haven't seen in over a decade.

And so there's very serious concerns monetarily, financially, where the country is. There's also a lack of accountability for the aid that's going over there, most notably on the economic side. A part of this that we often don't discuss a lot is that there is a substantial billions of dollars within this package that are going to fund government pensions, government employees, emergency services. like firefighters and police for Ukraine, despite the fact that their economy is growing during wartime and that they have the wherewithal and ability to pay for these services on their own. So there's no accountability. There is no buy-in from the administration on explaining to the American people what victory looks like or how long the American people will be committed to Ukraine and what reconstruction

looks like, what our liability there is. And there's no buy-in from this administration to require European partners to step up and do more. And this is in their backyard. And this is something that we feel if everyone on the Western, you know, the civilized Western world agrees that this is the top priority, why isn't it also the top priority to the degree to which it seems like it is for the United States for our European allies? And so those are some of the basic criteria that we've set out from the beginning. There are also things around drawdown authority and our ability, the United States' ability, to confront conflict anywhere else in the world where it should pop up. And that includes places like China and Taiwan and the straight between Taiwan and mainland China. And so those are just some of the basic concerns that we have.

As you were talking, I was thinking, has there been a specific bucket that Congress has said this 60 billion? is coming out of this bucket. In other words, how are we paying for this? Do we know? It's all emergency spending. So this is printing, printing dollars and financing it. We're paying for this with Treasury bonds at a very, very high yield, which again, it sort of gets into this inflation question.

And it exacerbates some of the things that the American people are already experiencing. You know, $100 billion in the grand scheme of the federal government's spending seems small, but it does have an impact, sure, surely. And so the American people know that. They see it at the grocery store. They see it on their credit card bills. They see it in their mortgage rates. They see it in their credit card rates. They experience this on a daily basis.

I think something that I've sort of centered around and honed in on is that many people in Washington, D.C. may not know. may be so disconnected from the struggles of the average person in their community, that those are factors that they don't take into consideration, and they should. One of the most vocal opponents on Capitol Hill against this additional aid money for Ukraine has been Congressman Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia, and she actually said beforehand that if Speaker Mike Johnson brought this to the floor for a vote, that she would introduce a motion to vacate, meaning that she would try to oust Johnson from his role as Speaker of the House. Why exactly is she threatening this? I mean,

there's lots of disagreement on Capitol Hill over bills, but why go so far as saying, I'm going to try and oust the speaker? Yeah, for her, and if you look at some of her commentary, I think that she's pointing to what she believes is a track record of non-conservative actions in the House. and she has herself identified a couple of them like FISA and there was a there was a vote on an amendment that would have required a institution of a warrant requirement within FISA. Speaker Johnson voted against that warrant that amendment and so she's brought up that. She's brought up Ukraine. She's brought up the omnibus bills. And so I think she's looking at the totality of what's come across the floor over the past few months.

months, and she is expressing extreme disappointment with that. And she's weighing in how she believes she can try and influence or shift the behavior of leadership. Well, and she's not alone. Now representatives Thomas Massey and Paul Goser, they've said that they'll join her in this effort in introducing this motion to vacate. Are we expecting that others will join as well? I think that over the weekend with the votes that occurred in the House, I think that you'll continue to see frustration with members. I don't know if others will co-sponsor it or not. I think the question for me is if one of those members calls up the resolution on the floor, which is a required action by the person, the sponsor of the motion to vacate if they call it up. Congresswoman Green introduced it as a non-privileged resolution, which it means.

that she has to call it up. Okay. And so if I could hypothesize, I think she's trying to use this as a pressure point on the speaker to try and do some course correction for the things that he's putting on the floor. We'll see if that plays out how she envisions it. Yeah. Explain if you had what it would take to remove Johnson and how likely it is that he could

be removed. Well, she could call up the resolution and it would be it's required of the house for them to take a vote on it or to consider it within two legislative days. So they will, if she chooses to call it up, they will have to take some sort of vote, whether that's a motion to table the resolution or an actual vote on vacating. If she does call it up, they'll have to act on it. And so I think that there are, listen, there are already a number of members who have co-sponsored the resolution, and it's the requisite number of if all Republicans voted to vacate,

that they could do it. Now, I don't think all Republicans will, and I think there may be a chance that some Democrats would come in and vote to help Mike Johnson maintain his speakership. Either they proactively vote or they remain off the floor so that the margins change for Speaker Johnson, and he doesn't have to get as high of a number of Republicans to vote for it. Okay, so he would need, in likelihood, he would need Democrats to, quote unquote, save him. It seems like it at this point that he could, that he could need them. So, you know, we'll see.

I think it's going to be quite the next few weeks and months. Yeah, certainly. There has been rumors in Washington, D.C. about conservative members of Congress encouraging Johnson to raise that threshold of the number that's required to introduce a motion to vacate. And that was something that when then Speaker Kevin McCarthy came in, that was part of the agreements of lowering that threshold. Is that possible, do you think, that we might see a change there where it would be a rule change where would be made harder to do this? It's certainly possible. Speaker Johnson considered it on the rule

for consideration of this supplemental spending bill that we're going through right now that's going over to the Senate tomorrow. He chose not to on this rule. And I think if there was going to be a rule where you made the change, it would have been this one. I think the justification for doing it on subsequent rules on pieces of legislation that have less contention amongst the conference will be more difficult. And because he had to get Democrats on consideration for this rule, there was discussion about whether he could potentially get Democrats to help him change the motion to vacate rule while they were supporting this coming to the floor. And so it remains to be seen whether he wants to do that again to try it. But I think that this was the most likely scenario to do it.

And he chose to pass on that. So I think that he is comfortable and has come to the conclusion in his mind that the conference is going to do what they want to do. And if they choose to vacate him, I think it seems like he has come to terms with that in his own mind. Okay. Just zooming out to look at the big picture here, I mean, it's been less than a year since McCarthy was ousted. If we then have Johnson ousted, what kind of message does that send to the American people? Well, you know, listen, I think that the House is, as a member, you are largely governed by your leadership. The decisions that they make impact you in more ways than you can probably explain.

And so I think that, you know, listen, we're a few months out from the election. I think that the national media, which certainly leans to help Democrats, it seems, would be out and, And talking about that in a major way and would at least be a question in voters' minds as they head to the polls. All of that said, though, I really do believe that this is up to the membership. I mean, they are the ones who are duly elected. They have certificates of election. And it's something that they have to choose. It's their choice on how they are led.

And so that will certainly be a consideration in members' minds. And we'll see if they factor that in to be a top priority in things that they would like to avoid heading into November. Sure. Let's take one minute and just circle back to the larger aid package. Like I said, it's $60 billion specifically for Ukraine out of $95 billion. So within that, you have $26 billion for Israel and over $8 billion for Taiwan. Regarding the Israel funding, do we know specifically what that is marked for? Is it for specific kinds of weapons, humanitarian aid?

What do we know about the Israel funding in this package? There's a combination of two buckets of funding. There's military aid, which will allow for foreign military sales of a number of U.S. hardware and weaponry. We're going to fund the development of things like the iron beam, which is a laser weapon, the Iron Dome, David Sling. We're going to be specifically funding all of those defensive capabilities within Israel and the development of them, importantly. We do a lot of cross-development research with the Israelis on products like those, and a lot of that research goes into our own defensive hardware like the Patriot missile system and things like that. So we're going to fund that. But at the same time, we're also funding pretty significantly to the tune of billions of dollars, humanitarian aid for Gaza.

And the concern from the Heritage Foundation, our experts, and has been communicated through Heritage Action to the Hill, is that a lot of this funding does not have the should. strictures on it to prevent it from falling into the hands of Hamas. And even if it does, I think that there's good argument to be made that once the aid gets over to Gaza, that it's really hard, practically speaking, to keep it from falling into the hands of terrorists. And so we raise that flag for members of both the House and the Senate that the way that they are structuring funding on Israel in particular would allow for this. And it's a huge vulnerability and a huge concern. After all, Hamas is able to do what they're able to do because of foreign funding that they get from folks like Iran and other nefarious actors in the world stage, on the world stage. And so severe concern about that.

And we've highlighted that for members. But, you know, if you have to get Democrats to support the piece of legislation that you're going to pass, you're going to have major vulnerabilities in the bill like this one, which is what Democrats have advocated for. Yeah. Now that this $95 billion aid package has passed in the House, it's headed to the Senate. Any red flags there? It's going to sail right through, correct? Sail right through. We expect it. They'll start consideration on Tuesday. And in the longest version of it, they end sometime Wednesday. They may come to a time agreement and wrap it up even quicker than that if a couple of amendment votes are allowed, which will fail, show votes. But yeah, we think that it'll wrap up by at the latest Wednesday afternoon.

And Biden has said he'll sign it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Biden helped to construct the deal with the House on with the Speaker's Office and the Republican Conference on the House side. All right. Ryan Walker of Heritage Action for America. Ryan, thanks so much for being with us. Thanks for having me on.

And with that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for being with us here on the Daily Signal podcast. If you have a minute, make sure to leave the Daily Subtle Podcast a five-stop. our rating and review. We love hearing your feedback. And make sure to check out our afternoon show around 5 p.m. today where we bring you the top news of the day. Have a great rest of your Tuesday. We'll see you right back here around 5 p.m. for our top news edition. The Daily Signal podcast is made possible because of listeners like you. Executive producers are Rob Bluey and Kate Trinko. Hosts are Virginia Allen, Brian Gottstein, Mary Margaret O'Lehann, and Tyler O'Neill. Sound design by

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