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House Speaker Mike Johnson warned Monday that he might not bring the massive foreign aid bill being considered in the Senate up for a vote because it fails to address border security, saying the lower chamber will “work its own will” to tackle the issue.
The legislation, which provides $95 billion in aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, passed three procedural vote hurdles in the Senate Monday night, but GOP-led efforts to stall the bill’s progress have delayed a final vote on the package, possibly until early Tuesday morning.
The Senate’s work on the bill, which kept senators in Washington working through the Super Bowl weekend and through a planned two-week recess that was slated to begin Monday, might all be for nothing, as the legislation doesn’t include any provisions related to border security that the House speaker has deemed necessary.
“House Republicans were crystal clear from the very beginning of discussions that any so-called national security supplemental legislation must recognize that national security begins at our own border,” Johnson (R-La.) said in a statement. “The House acted ten months ago to help enact transformative policy change by passing the Secure Our Border Act, and since then, including today, the Senate has failed to meet the moment.”
The House speaker went on to praise the Senate for rejecting a bill last week negotiated between Biden administration officials and a bipartisan group of senators that sought to link money for war-torn Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan with enhanced border security measures and changes to US asylum law, arguing that it was “insufficient.”
“[I]t should have gone back to the drawing board to amend the current bill to include real border security provisions that would actually help end the ongoing catastrophe,” Johnson argued. “Instead, the Senate’s foreign aid bill is silent on the most pressing issue facing our country.”
“The mandate of national security supplemental legislation was to secure America’s own border before sending additional foreign aid around the world. It is what the American people demand and deserve,” Johnson continued. “Now, 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.”
