The Guardian is reporting that Mike “Moses” Johnson has some demands of his own for passing Ukraine aid in the House. Frankly, I think two out of three of the demands are just plain bad faith proposals, and this has pushed me into Congressman Gerry Connolly’s camp of “No deals to save Mike Johnson from MTG.” Johnson should just put the Senate bill on Ukraine aid on the floor and let it pass. Instead, Johnson wants to make the money a loan, and he wants President Biden to rescind his order to halt new natural gas projects.
Johnson floats potential demands to move long-stalled Ukraine aid package
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Congress may be out of Washington DC, with lawmakers back in their districts and home states until next week, but there are signs of movement in the long-stalled military aid package for Israel, Ukraine and other national security priorities. Yesterday, Republican House speaker Mike Johnson gave an interview to Fox News where he signaled three demands he may make in order to move the package through the chamber. These were including in the legislation provisions to seize Russian assets and give them to Ukraine, make the aid a loan that Kyiv will pay back at a future date, and roll back Joe Biden’s decision earlier this year to pause new natural gas export projects.
The big questions now are: will Democrats, who control the Senate and have already passed a version of the military aid bill, accept Johnson’s asks? What about his fellow Republicans in the House, where there are rumblings of booting Johnson from the job? And what of Donald Trump, who clearly has his eye on the matter – after all, he played a big part in killing an earlier compromise that would have paired the assistance with hardline immigration policies. We’ll see if any answers reveal themselves today.
Which is the whole point. Even if Democrats were to agree to Johnson’s demands, Trump will blow the deal up just like he did with the immigration bill. This is more delay, which is a tactic that Trump uses all the time. And yes, this bill is to placate Trump’s stupid idea to make the aid a loan, but Trump will say, “NO” to the bill because it would hurt his Russian master.
Last time checked, we don’t make loans to allies like Israel. It seems Israel gets a blank check on U.S. aid, even when the leader of Israel is committing war crimes. But Ukraine has to pay us back for a loan? WTF?
And yes, pushing the Earth past the tipping point on global climate change is what everyone should be doing. /s. Fucking asshole.
One person is holding up Ukraine aid, and it is Mike Johnson. If he allowed the Senate bill to go to the floor, it would pass with bipartisan support. But Johnson is too much of chicken shit to offend MTG and Trump.
