Democrats are keeping the pressure on Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) following the Senate recently passing — with bipartisan support — a foreign aid package establishing new assistance for Israel, Ukraine, and others.
Johnson responded to the deal by again pushing for action on the southern border, though members of his own party voted down a bipartisan proposal in that area in the Senate. And in the time since, the House has not put forward the Senate deal for a vote, though its extensive support in the upper legislative chamber suggests it would easily pass in the House.
“Just put the bill on the floor for a vote. Let us vote,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) demanded at a press conference in recent days in reference to the aid deal. “Maybe it’ll pass, maybe it won’t pass. But if you don’t want it to pass, then you make your argument of why you don’t want it to pass. We think it’s going to pass but let the House vote. That’s how the House works its will. Not behind closed doors with Speaker Johnson and crazy people like Marjorie Taylor Greene. That’s not how the House works its will. We work our will by simply voting.”
The proposed security assistance was also a subject of a recent meeting at the White House between legislative leaders and the president, where afterwards Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) similarly stated that the pressure had been on Johnson.
Meanwhile, also a subject of continuing demands for action is that border deal that recently faltered in the Senate amid publicly stated opposition from Donald Trump, which led to accusations of elected Republicans orienting their policy priorities around his will. In a recent trip to the southern border, President Joe Biden said the Senate should reconsider the deal, which would boost hiring on border security teams, expand the roster of judges working on immigration cases, and create new federal powers for closing the southern border.
