Legislative leaders met Tuesday at the White House amid questions on funding the federal government and providing security assistance for Ukraine amid an ongoing Russian invasion of the Eastern European country, and Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said afterwards that meeting participants ratcheted up the demands for Johnson to get moving on Ukraine aid.
Also participating in the gathering were Vice President Kamala Harris, Senate GOP leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and others. “We said to the Speaker: Get it done,” Schumer said, referencing the aid for Ukraine. The Senate already approved a foreign aid deal that sets up tens of billions of dollars in new assistance for the country amid reported supply shortages coinciding with Russian military advances within Ukraine, but the deal is facing delays amid leadership in the GOP-controlled House demanding action on the border.
“The intensity in that room was surprising to me,” Schumer said of the meeting at the White House, per CNN’s Manu Raju. “The overwhelming sentiment in that meeting is we have to do Ukraine now.”
Johnson did not take questions from reporters after the White House gathering, per CBS’ Scott MacFarlane. Johnson is expressing commitment to securing government funding that would be required to maintain bedrock federal services, but the persistence of demands for action to address border problems that Republicans misrepresent isn’t exactly subtle. Republicans in the Senate voted down a bipartisan proposal that would have given the federal government new powers to close the southern border in periods of high numbers of crossings.
Former President Donald Trump, who remains the front-runner for this year’s presidential nomination from the Republican Party, expressed opposition to the sunk border deal presented in the Senate, leading to the impression that Congressional Republicans who registered their own opposition were just capitulating to Trump. A vocal portion of the GOP also opposes the prospect of the U.S. providing security assistance to Ukraine at all. The aid involves weapons deliveries.
