President Mike Johnson has begun publicly laying out possible conditions for extending a new round of US military aid to Ukraine, the strongest indication yet that he plans to push through the House a package that many Republicans see as toxic and have tried to block.
His terms may include tying aid to Kiev to a measure that would force President Biden to overturn a moratorium on new permits for LNG export facilities, which Republicans would see as a political victory against his climate agenda. Democratic president. The move would also give Mr. Johnson a strong ward victory, unblocking a proposed export terminal in his home state of Louisiana that would be located along a shipping channel linking the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Charles.
“When we come back after this work period, we will carry a product, but it will have some major innovations,” Mr. Johnson said Sunday in an interview with Fox News.
That strongly suggests the Ukraine aid package, which has stalled on Capitol Hill for months amid Republican resistance, could clear Congress within weeks. She enjoys strong support among Democrats and a grand coalition of ruling Republicans, and the main obstacle standing in her way in the House has been Mr. Johnson’s refusal to raise it in the face of fierce far-right opposition in the GOP to send more aid to Kiev.
But after the Senate approved a $95 billion aid package for Ukraine and Israel, and with Mr. Johnson facing pressure from the Biden administration and NATO allies, the Republican speaker is looking for a way forward for the bill that would cause the least political reaction in his own ranks.
Now, the question appears to be not whether Mr. Johnson will allow aid to come to the floor, but in what form and when.
In the interview, he openly discussed how to structure the aid, saying he hadn’t made any final decisions about what he would ultimately put up for a vote, but that he was “working to build that consensus” among House Republicans.
Mr Johnson mentioned the REPO Act, which would pay for part of the bailout by selling frozen Russian state assets, as an idea under consideration.
“If we can use the seized assets of the Russian oligarchs to allow the Ukrainians to fight them, that’s just pure poetry,” he said.
US officials had previously been wary of the idea, warning that there was no precedent for seizing large sums of money from another sovereign nation and that the move could cause unforeseen legal and financial consequences. Only about $5 billion or so of Russian assets are in the hands of US institutions. more than $300 billion in Russian central bank assets are hidden in Western nations.
However, the Biden administration has quietly floated the idea amid dwindling financial support for Ukraine.
Mr. Johnson also supported the idea of sending some of the aid as a loan, noting that “even President Trump has talked about” the idea.
And he mentioned an idea he first raised privately in February, in a White House meeting with Mr. Biden and other congressional leaders, to tie aid to lifting the Biden administration’s freeze on liquefied natural gas exports. He and other Republicans have argued that by banning US domestic energy exports, the administration has actually increased dependence on Russian gas and indirectly funded President Vladimir V. Putin’s aggression against Ukraine. He cited the case of Calcasieu Pass 2, the proposed export terminal in Louisiana.
“We want to unleash American energy,” Mr. Johnson said. “We want to have natural gas exports to help definance Vladimir Putin’s war effort there.”
Overall, the measures outlined by Mr. Johnson appear aimed at convincing skeptical Republicans that at least the costs of the aid package will be offset. Although he did not mention it on Sunday, he has also considered imposing new sanctions against Russia.
Reversing the LNG moratorium in particular could be a powerful political boost for Republicans, stepping up pressure on the White House to abandon a policy they have long denounced.
The government suspended new export licenses after months of protests from environmental activists, who argued that adding new gas export facilities would lock in decades of additional emissions of greenhouse gases, the main driver of climate change. The government said it would take time to analyze the impact of the new permits on climate, national security and the economy.
The United States still exports more liquefied natural gas than any other country, and export capacity will double by 2027 because the government has already approved a handful of new export terminals that are under construction.
Mr Johnson’s search for a politically viable option to fund Ukraine’s efforts to fend off Russian aggression puts him in the middle of two powerful and opposing forces. The hard-right wing of his party, led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia and patronized by former President Donald J. Trump, urged him not to allow a vote on aid to Ukraine, arguing that the United States should not be pouring tens of billions of dollars into another country’s war. But the leaders of most NATO countries have warned Mr Johnson that failure to help Kiev could lead to the fledgling democracy’s overthrow, a message echoed by Republican incumbents Mr Biden and Democrats.
Ms Green filed a motion calling for Mr Johnson’s removal late last month before the House left Washington for recess, saying she wanted to send him “a warning”.
Mr. Johnson on Sunday called the move a “distraction from our mission” but said he shared Ms. Green’s frustration with the spending bills Congress passed to avert a government shutdown and planned to speak with her later. the week.
At the same time, Mr. Johnson continued to face pressure from leaders around the world who sought to impress upon him the cost of US inaction.
Mr Johnson and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine spoke by phone on Thursday, and Mr Zelensky briefed the speaker on the dire situation on the battlefield in Ukraine and urged “swift passage” of aid.
Mr Zelensky said they discussed “the importance of cutting off Russia’s sources of funding for its war as soon as possible and using frozen Russian assets for the benefit of Ukraine”.
“We recognize that there are different views in the House of Representatives on how to proceed,” the Ukrainian president wrote on social media, “but the key is to keep the issue of aid to Ukraine as a unifying factor.”
Brad Plummer and Lisa Friedman contributed to the report.