The House of Representatives on Saturday passed a long-stalled foreign aid package that provides funding to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, with a majority of lawmakers backing money for U.S. allies around the world. The package, now headed to the Senate, will almost certainly become law.
The Senate passed similar legislation in February. But despite differing bases of opposition to various elements of the legislation, which threatened to undermine the package as a whole, Speaker Mike Johnson promoted foreign aid using a complicated strategy: the package was split into three parts, each given its own vote, added a fourth bill with Republican priorities as a sweetener and then put it all back together once it was all passed.
The plan, laid out in a rule adopted Friday, was designed to capitalize on support for each part of the $95 billion package while preventing opposition to one part from tearing them all down.
A majority of Republicans voted against aid to Ukraine on Saturday, reflecting fierce opposition within the Republican Party to continuing to help Ukraine against President Vladimir V. Putin's Russian invasion. The coalition that voted against the bill stretched from right-wing members of the House Freedom Caucus to leaders such as Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the House's No. 3 Republican. On aid to Israel, on the other hand, most Republicans voted yes.
Thirty-four right-wing Republicans also opposed aid to U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific, while Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, declined to take a yes-or-no position and voted “present.” Representative Bob Good, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, was one of 21 members of his party who voted against the Israel package. Echoing one of the many grievances shared by far-right Republicans who opposed any relief measures, Mr. Good said his support for “Israel's right to defend itself remains unwavering” but that he disagreed with a measure that would reduce the national debt would increase. .
While all Democrats voted in favor of aid to Ukraine and all but Ms. Tlaib supported funding for Taiwan, 37 left-leaning Democrats defected to vote against the Israeli aid bill. They said before the vote that they opposed unfettered aid to Israel that could be used in its offensive in Gaza. Opposition to Israeli aid represented a minority among Democrats, but reflected deep opposition to unconditional aid and divisions in the party over Gaza. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland represented a notable new “no” vote among Democrats, and other notable figures included Reps. Donald S. Beyer Jr. from Virginia, Earl Blumenauer from Oregon and John Garamendi from California.
Yet the 37 “no” votes, while a break from Washington's rock-solid support for the Jewish state, fell short of what the opposition bloc's progressives had hoped to muster. Thirty-nine Democrats voted “no” on Friday on the rule to get the foreign aid package to the House floor, a goal that progressives narrowly missed on the Israel bill on Saturday. Fourteen of those Democrats voted in favor of aid to Israel on Saturday, while twelve Democrats who voted to bring the package to the floor on Friday subsequently voted against the funding itself.
Twenty-five Republicans voted against the fourth bill, which included measures that could lead to a ban on TikTok in the United States and redirect money from seized Russian assets to aid Ukraine. Democrats voted 174 in favor of this bill, which was intended to sweeten the overall package for conservatives.