"My message to [Zelensky] will be the same as it’s been to the president," Johnson said at The Wall Street Journal CEO Summit on Monday. "This is an important battle for all the reasons we know, but I don’t think it’s a radical proposition to say that if we’re going to have a national security supplemental package, it ought to begin with our own national security."
Johnson is scheduled to meet on Tuesday with Zelensky, who is in town to lobby for extended US aid for his country. The speaker argued at the summit that the Biden administration had failed to address the concerns of Republicans in order to gain their support for the national security spending package.
The White House’s Office of Management and Budget warned in a letter to Congress last week that it would run out of money for military aid to Ukraine by the end of the year unless Congress passed its supplemental funding request.