Johnson Says Foreign Aid Must Follow Border Bill

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said that he would not support a foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan unless there was an agreement to secure the U.S.-Mexico border. The move came after the Senate passed a bill that would send significant military and financial aid to the three U.S. allies.

The speaker said in a statement that in the “absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters.”

“America deserves better than the Senate’s status quo,” he added.

Johnson said that House Republicans were “crystal clear from the very beginning of discussions that any so-called national security supplemental legislation must recognize that national security begins at our own border.”

He said that the House passed the Secure Our Border Act last year, but that the Senate had not done the same.

The senator said that it was correct for the Senate to reject a combination immigration, border and foreign aid bill “due to its insufficient border provisions, and it should have gone back to the drawing board to amend the current bill to include real border security provisions that would actually help end the ongoing catastrophe.”

The Senate cleared another hurdle toward passing the bill prior to its final passage, he said. The move came after a filibuster effort by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who protested the use of taxpayer dollars for the effort.

Paul wrote on social media that the proposed bill “threatens the fiscal solvency of our country.” He said that the bill “along with so much of the rest of the spending, is dragging America down and threatening a day of destruction.”

This foreign aid bill threatens the fiscal solvency of our country. I think it, along with so much of the rest of the spending, is dragging America down and threatening a day of destruction. The filibuster continues tonight! pic.twitter.com/UG9DqIVhYN

— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) February 12, 2024

The Kentucky senator then called for the filibuster to continue. He was joined in opposition from a number of other senators, including Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) which did not block its passage.

Johnson’s position could cause significant political issues for him. Due to the lowered threshold for vacating the speaker’s chair, there is a risk that representatives in favor or against the aid package could side with Democrats to remove him from the position.