Freshly picked GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson and his allies in the House of Representatives are bracing for clashes with the party’s old guard in the Senate, led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, over Ukraine.
Johnson, a Louisiana congressman elected speaker of the House on October 25, has sought to separate any future potential US aid to Ukraine from support for Israel, immediately shooting down a $105 billion aid package demanded by the Biden administration earlier this month seeking to link Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and border security into a single package.
“We are going to move a stand-alone Israel funding bill this week in the House,” Johnson said in a television interview on Sunday. “We believe that is a pressing and urgent need. There are lots of things going on around the world that we have to address and we will, but right now what’s happening in Israel takes the immediate attention and I think we’ve got to separate that and get it through. I believe there’ll be bipartisan support for that and I’m gonna push very hard for it,” he said.
McConnell, on the other hand, has backed the Biden White House’s bid to ram Ukraine aid through Congress alongside the other spending.
“I know there are some Republicans in the Senate, and maybe more in the House, saying Ukraine is somehow different. I view it as all interconnected,” McConnell said in an interview last week.
Actually, McConnell claims, the proposed Biden war chest’s $61.4 billion in cash for Ukraine is designed to help “rebuild” America’s “industrial base,” since “a significant portion” of the money doled out will be spent to manufacture weapons inside the United States.
“We’re rebuilding our industrial base. The Ukrainians are destroying the army of one of our biggest rivals. I have a hard time finding anything wrong with that,” McConnell said.
McConnell’s views don’t jibe with those of the minority of Republican lawmakers who helped oust McCarthy earlier this month, with the speaker removed after being accused of making “side deals” with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown, and reportedly covertly agreeing to hold a standalone vote on Ukraine at a later date.
There are nearly 60 rebel Republicans in the House and close to a dozen in the Senate have have voted against Ukraine aid in the past, against the party's general line, Mike Johnson among them. Many of these same GOP lawmakers now seek to shift the focus of US military assistance abroad on Israel.
“We have a lot of work ahead of us,” McConnell said last week after Johnson’s election, calling on House and Senate Republicans to join hands to “work together on a number of urgent priorities,” among them another boost in US defense spending before the Christmas break. Johnson, for his part, has recommended a freeze on further bumps in funding until sometime after the new year.
Johnson has already also found some apparent allies in the Senate, with a few lawmakers echoing the arguments of their House Colleagues in calling for new leadership.
“We need to start breaking the mold here. This isn’t working. We’re $33.5 trillion in debt. The old way of doing business has failed, is failing. We need to approach things differently. From my standpoint, within [the] Republican Conference we need a different form of governance,” said Senator Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican who voted against reelecting McConnell for another term as Senate Minority leader last year.
The split among and between the House and Senate Republican caucuses echoes the one seen on the national electoral stage in the 2024 presidential race. Former President Donald Trump, who currently dominates polling for the Republican nomination, has promised to end the Ukraine conflict in “24 hours” if he returns to power, and has pledged to support Israel, despite offering criticism of Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israeli intelligence for falling asleep at the switch on October 7.