House approves bill providing $300 million in aid to Ukraine

The House voted to provide $300 million in aid to Ukraine, passing the measure as a stand-alone bill after it was stripped from the annual defense spending bill in an effort by GOP leaders to appease hard-line conservatives and secure their support to advance the must-pass legislation when it came up for a vote Thursday night.

Lawmakers voted 311-117 to approve the funding, with more than 100 Republicans joining all Democrats in approving the measure. Some 117 Republicans voted against the measure, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who has been a vocal critic of providing additional aid to the war-torn country.

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“I’ve been very vocal, fighting everyone to get the Ukraine money out. I told them if you want to send money to Ukraine, put it in a stand-alone bill,” Greene told the Washington Examiner. “You can send money to Ukraine, but it doesn’t belong in our defense bill — especially when the Department of Defense mission statement says that the mission is to deter war and to protect the United States national security. Funding a war in Ukraine does neither one of our mission goals.”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) first indicated plans he would remove the Ukraine aid from the defense spending bill last week, but he later reversed course over the weekend when he said it would be “too difficult” to do so before the government shutdown deadline. Lawmakers then introduced an amendment on the floor to remove the additional aid, but the motion failed on the floor.

However, a handful of Republicans signaled they’d vote against the bill if it included Ukrainian aid, prompting leadership to advance a procedural vote that would strip the language from the bill without sending it back to the committee.

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The move came just moments after the House passed the defense spending bill, marking the second appropriations bill the lower chamber advanced on Thursday evening.

Congress has until midnight on Sept. 30 to pass any form of spending legislation, or else the government will run out of money and shut down until a deal is made. Neither the House nor the Senate has managed to advance all their appropriations bills or a stopgap measure to fund the government temporarily, making a partial shutdown increasingly likely.