On Saturday, the House passed a series of bills to provide aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, along with a package that included forcing Chinese company ByteDance to sell TikTok.
After a morning discussion about House floor, the four bills will be rolled into a single package and sent to the Senate for approval. After that, it will be sent to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.
“I understand it’s not a perfect bill,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Saturday after the vote. “We would rather send bullets into conflict overseas than our own boys, our troops. And I think this is an important moment and an important opportunity to make that decision.”
Johnson’s decision to hold the vote carried political risk, as hard-line members of his own party threatened to oust him. In March, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., introduced a motion to remove Johnson from his seat, but has yet to force a vote on the measure.
“As I’ve said many times, I don’t walk into this building worrying about an evacuation proposal,” Johnson said Saturday. “I have to do my job.”
After the passage of the long foreign aid, Johnson received a series of public statements thanking him.
“I want to thank President Johnson, Leader Jeffries and the bipartisan coalition of lawmakers in the House for voting for our national security,” Biden said in a statement. “I urge the Senate to quickly send this package to my desk so I can sign it into law.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., signaled Saturday that the Senate could vote on the package on Tuesday.
“I am grateful to the United States House of Representatives, both parties and personally to President Mike Johnson for the decision that keeps history on the right track,” the Ukrainian president said. Volodymyr Zelenskyy he said in a post on X after the vote.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz also thanked Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., on Saturday for helping get the aid through.
The bills provide more than $60 billion for aid to Ukraine, more than $26 billion for Israel and more than $8 billion for the security of Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific. A fourth bill includes a measure that would force China’s ByteDance to sell social media platform TikTok within nine months – although the president can offer a 90-day extension – or face a national ban.
“It is unfortunate that the House of Representatives is using the cover of significant foreign and humanitarian aid to once again entangle a ban bill,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement on Saturday.
The House approval is a critical next step for foreign aid, which has been stalled since President Biden first proposed it in October. After the long-awaited Ukraine vote was passed, a crowd of House Democrats waving Ukrainian flags broke into a chorus of cheers.
In February, the Senate approved a $95 billion version of the aid to finance Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. However, the House effectively shelved this bill largely due to political threats from hard-line House Republicans such as Rep. Green.
Despite the impending political backlash, President Johnson was persuaded to reconsider the foreign aid package after Iran’s attempted attack on Israel last weekend. This cascading move sparked a renewed bipartisan push to move the House to support Israel.
In response, Johnson put the foreign aid package at the top of the House agenda. He devised a plan to structure foreign aid into separate bills, which he presented to his Republican colleagues on Monday night.
After that meeting, Green expressed her displeasure with Johnson’s proposed foreign aid bills, but reiterated that she had not yet decided whether she would force a vote to oust him.
“I think it’s another misdirection for President Johnson in our meeting,” he said Monday.
Green’s bid to leave came up during Saturday’s vote. Walking down the House floor, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told NBC News he didn’t expect Greene to force a vote on the proposal Saturday.