In comments at the White House this Friday, President Joe Biden criticized the GOP majority in the House for a multi-week recess from work in Washington, D.C., amid urgent legislative needs.
That list includes the foreign aid deal recently passed by the Senate, which sets up tens of billions of dollars worth of assistance for Ukraine alongside help for Israel and Taiwan. On the occasion of the Senate’s approval, Republican leadership in the House again began complaining about the border, demanding action… though members of their own party recently voted down a bipartisan border deal proposed in the Senate. Republicans declared the deal insufficient, characterizing proposed assistance for migrants with integrating into their local communities as an incentive for undocumented immigration and glossing over new powers provided to the federal government allowing border closures.
“The House of Representatives must pass the bipartisan national security bill,” Biden said, referring to the aid package. “The bill provides urgent funding for Ukraine, and it passed overwhelmingly in the Senate. And there’s no question — none, none — that if the Speaker called for a vote in the House, it would pass easily today. […] Russia is taking Ukrainian territory for the first time in many months. But here in America, the Speaker gave the House a two-week vacation.”
Biden said the House should “come back,” remarking: “They have to come back. They have to come back and get this done, because failure to support Ukraine in this critical moment will never be forgotten in history.”
Biden has consistently pushed for the House to advance the foreign aid proposal, though some in the Republican Party keep challenging the notion of the U.S. sending assistance to Ukraine at all. Republicans in the House, as they continue turning instead to border ambitions, have pushed for a jump-start to border wall construction and a revival of the policies that forced some asylum-seekers to wait outside the U.S. in potential danger while their cases were processed.
