House lawmakers are circulating two separate discharge petitions to bring some sort of Ukraine aid bill to the floor, setting the stage for a drawn-out fight as Congress pushes to provide increased funding to the wartorn country.
House Rules Committee ranking member Jim McGovern (D-MA) activated a discharge petition on Tuesday morning as a mechanism to advance the Senate supplemental bill providing Ukraine and Israel aid in exchange for stricter security measures at the southern border. The discharge petition would allow lawmakers to consider the bill without needing GOP leadership to schedule a vote, something Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has said he wouldn’t do.
“Ukraine is out of time. I mean, they are literally out of time,” McGovern said. “So, you know, we hope that this increases the pressure on the speaker.”
For a discharge petition to be successful, it must receive signatures from 218 members for the legislation to be brought to the floor. However, that is easier said than done, as any proposal put forward must be able to garner substantial bipartisan support.
McGovern acknowledged a discharge petition is not the most simple path forward, noting the move also serves as a pressure point for Johnson to bring the Senate bill to the House floor for an up-or-down vote.
“The best way to move on this is for the speaker to actually do his job and schedule a debate and vote on Ukraine,” McGovern said.
The Senate passed a $95 billion foreign aid bill on Feb. 13 that would provide funding toward Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. However, Johnson deemed the legislation “dead on arrival” because of the lack of border security policy, even as several Republicans have conceded the bill would pass the House should it be brought to the floor.
Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is floating another discharge petition in the House, one that would include much of the Senate’s language while also including border security provisions. That effort, led by Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Jared Golden (D-ME), became eligible for signatures last week.
As of Tuesday, McGovern’s petition has garnered 86 signatures, all from Democrats. Fitzpatrick’s petition has only nine so far, although the Pennsylvania Republican told the Washington Examiner they have not yet started to lobby for signatures from his colleagues. Notably, three Democrats have already backed the bipartisan measure, a point Fitzpatrick noted as evidence his proposal is more viable in the lower chamber.
“They’re not even getting every Democrat to sign that,” Fitzpatrick told the Washington Examiner. “So that’s a nonstarter.”
McGovern has similarly brushed off Fitzpatrick’s proposal, pointing to its lack of humanitarian aid and some of its immigration policies that he said Democrats “find offensive.”
“Fitzpatrick’s bill is a nonstarter for us for a whole bunch of reasons,” McGovern said. “And this has to go back to the Senate. So, I mean … time is of the essence. Sending a new bill with new stuff, sending that back to the Senate, God only knows what will happen if it goes back there.”
Fitzpatrick pushed back on Democratic criticisms the bipartisan bill lacks certain provisions such as humanitarian aid, arguing his discharge petition would allow for an amendment process to include language a majority of the House can approve.
“They don’t know our final text. They’re only commenting on our bare-bones language that we’ve introduced,” Fitzpatrick said. “But the way the rule is written, we’re gonna get one massive amendment in the nature of a substitute that can include a lot of their priorities. So it’s a bipartisan approach. It’s the only one in the House.”
Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), who has led the bipartisan discharge petition with Fitzpatrick, also affirmed the group would be willing to accept additional provisions to their bill to get it across the finish line.
“Yeah, I welcome it,” he said. “We want to get something done.”
Bacon said lawmakers would likely start “getting names on it” as early as this week, noting the petition could be ready for a vote by the end of this month. The Nebraska Republican projected it could take two weeks to secure the 218-signature threshold and likely an additional week to bring the bill to the floor.
Bacon acknowledged a sense of urgency to approve the funding as soon as possible, alluding to a deadline by which Ukraine must receive aid or risk devastating military losses. He declined to say when that date may be but noted it would be “early spring.”
“I think we’re within that deadline,” Bacon said. “I know it’s challenging, which means this is going to have to be a bipartisan solution. I think there’s bipartisan support.”
However, the bipartisan petition may face an uphill battle in the House as Democratic leadership has instead expressed support for the Senate foreign aid bill being pushed by McGovern.
“What we’re asking our colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, is to sign the discharge petition that will bring to the floor the Senate national security bipartisan supplemental,” House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar (D-CA) said on Tuesday. “That is the fastest and easiest way to solve this issue.”
Johnson has felt pressure from all sides to bring some sort of foreign aid proposal to the floor, including from his Republican colleagues in the upper chamber. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) reiterated his calls for Johnson to bring the Senate supplemental bill to the House floor for a vote, urging the speaker to “figure out how to pass” it.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“I want to encourage the speaker again to allow a vote,” McConnell told reporters. “Let the House speak.”
“We don’t have time for all of this,” he added. “We’ve got a bill that got 70 votes in the Senate. Give members of the House of Representatives an opportunity to vote on it. That’s the solution.”