Speaker Mike Johnson has announced an upcoming House vote on a standalone Israel aid package while firing shots at his Senate colleagues in a memo on Saturday.
The top House Republican, who rose from relative obscurity to his chamber’s top post last year, issued a scathing critique of the Senate in his letter to House Republicans, revealing the fissures within the GOP between the two branches of the legislature.
“Their leadership is aware that by failing to include the House in their negotiations, they have eliminated the ability for swift consideration of any legislation," he wrote of the senate.
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“Next week, we will take up and pass a clean, standalone Israel supplemental package,” Johnson said. He emphasized the critical need to support the Middle Eastern state and slammed the Senate for failing to quickly address the “perilous circumstances currently facing Israel.”
“The House will have to work its will on these issues and our priorities will need to be addressed,” he said. “The Senate will no longer have excuses, however misguided, against swift passage of this critical support for our ally.”
Johnson, who was chosen to lead the House after former speaker Kevin McCarthy’s ouster, was elected with the full support of the chamber’s most conservative caucus in the hopes that he would be more amenable to their hard-right demands.
The spending bill has been a frequent flashpoint in the showdown between political parties in the past months; Democrats seek to tie funding for Israel and Ukraine in their respective wars, but Republicans have repeatedly drawn a line over border security.
While senators finalize their negotiations across the aisle to put a spending plan on the floor, Johnson’s message underscores House Republicans’ imperative to act without them. The Senate is expected to finalize and release the full text of their bill by Monday.
Read it at NBC News
