WASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and the chairmen of key House committees dealing with national security are working to develop their own Ukraine aid package, an alternative that they hope can pass Congress without alienating conservatives who oppose further funding for the war-torn country.
The plans are in their preliminary stages and far from fully formed, three sources told NBC News, but Republicans who support Ukraine want to be prepared to tackle the legislation as soon as Congress clears another government shutdown deadline on March 22. Waiting any longer could push passage of critical aid for Ukraine into April, given a planned two-week congressional recess at the end of March, two sources said.
Among the proposals being floated is treating some of the nonmilitary aid as a type of loan, said House Foreign Affairs Chairman Mike McCaul, R-Texas, who is involved in the discussions, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. Economic aid to support the general function of Ukraine’s government and its long-term rebuilding efforts would be subject to a loan under this plan. Russian assets seized by the U.S. government through sanctions could also be used as collateral for loans to the Ukrainians, McCaul said, adding that the plan could also have a generous repayment system to help Ukraine.
Offering up loans as part of the package is designed to help ease the concerns of House conservatives who have criticized billions in U.S. aid for Ukraine and said they will not support sending further U.S. taxpayer dollars without a long-term plan to win the war.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., expressed only modest interest in the new proposal Friday, saying, “We’ve been having a lot of conversations about how to resolve the differences” on Ukraine.
McCaul said the proposal would make Russia at least partially responsible for paying for Ukraine to rebuild.
“We’re looking at two factors. One is my REPO Act, which will allow us to attach assets related to the Russian sovereign assets that have been sanctioned to help pay for Russia’s war crimes. That’s a very popular idea in the House,” McCaul said. “And secondly, the loan program. … At the end of the day, the Russian sovereign assets would pay for that or they would just default.”
The Democratic-led Senate Foreign Relations Committee overwhelmingly passed its version of the REPO Act at the end of January but leadership has not put the bill on the Senate floor because it could destroy a sense of urgency to get Ukraine the aid it needs to turn the tide of the war, a senior Democratic aide told NBC News. The House has not taken up the bill yet either.
Graham endorsed the loan idea in an interview last week, crediting former President Donald Trump with coming up with it. Trump posted on his Truth Social site on Feb. 10 that Congress should not provide aid money to any country “unless it is done as a loan.”
Graham, who once espoused unconditional support for Ukraine, helped to kill a Ukraine aid and border package in the Senate earlier this year that he helped to negotiate, saying that Trump opposed it and preferred a loan structure.
“I think President Trump when he mentioned a couple of weeks ago that let’s make this stuff a loan, resonates with the taxpayer,” Graham said last week. “And I think it will make it unlock the House. … You may have to add a little more humanitarian aid to get Democrats, but turn it into a loan and maybe we get this thing done.”
Asked about the loan idea last month, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that there “can be a place for loans in foreign assistance,” but suggested that Ukraine isn’t one of them. “When you’re dealing with a country that is fighting for its life, like Ukraine … talking about loans as opposed to providing the necessary infusion of cash is only going to make the economic problems of that country worse,” he said, adding that a stable Ukraine “is in the fundamental national security interest of the United States.”
A U.S. official familiar with White House’s position told NBC News Friday that some “aid is better than no aid, but this is not an ideal way of doing it. … Asking a country to take on tens of millions of dollars of debt that they can’t afford to pay off is a recipe for a significant burden, will hurt Ukraine long term and could lead to economic crises down the road.”
The foreign aid and border package that passed the Senate last month is “still the best path forward,” the official said, noting that Johnson was briefed by the CIA director last week “and is well aware of how dire the situation is in Ukraine right now and how bleak the country’s options are to continue defending itself.”
Johnson has not yet made a final determination on how the House will proceed after rejecting the Senate-passed aid and immigration package last month.
McCaul is insistent that work on a new Ukraine aid package begin soon, suggesting the House would write its own bill and send that back to the Senate. “We’re not interested in a pingpong match. We want to have a bill that’s solid that we can pass here, and I believe we can, and send it over to the Senate and go to the White House,” he said. “This is urgent in Ukraine. We can’t waste any more time.”
One consideration for Johnson, two sources said, is that if the House punts the foreign aid bill to April, Republicans will have rounded the corner on several key primaries, which could free up additional GOP support for funding to Ukraine, said two officials with knowledge of discussions.
Meanwhile, as NBC News reported last month, the Pentagon is weighing giving Ukraine urgent weapons without waiting for Congress to approve funds. The lion’s share of assistance for Ukraine comes in the form of weapons pulled from the U.S. supply; the nonmilitary aid that could be subject to a loan is just a small slice of U.S. aid to the country.
And other supporters of Ukraine in the House have prepped long-shot bids to try to force the aid money through.
House Democrats have prepared a discharge petition, a procedural mechanism to force a vote on a piece of legislation essentially over the speaker’s head, to try to pass the Senate immigration and foreign aid bill. But they would need 218 signatures to force that vote, and that means getting several Republicans to join their efforts.
Separately, Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., and Jared Golden, D-Maine, authored their own foreign aid package that offers less funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan than the Senate bill. It also includes some provisions to reduce the number of migrant crossings at the southern border. Fitzpatrick said he has personally spoken to both Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., about a way to bring the bill to the floor for a vote and he’s preparing his own discharge petition as a backstop to apply pressure to get a vote.
Those efforts appear to be making no headway, however. On Friday, when Scalise was asked if there would be any consideration of Fitzpatrick’s bill, he responded with a firm, “No.” And Jeffries repeated his insistence that the Senate foreign aid bill is “the only way forward” in the House because it would get bipartisan support from Democrats and Republicans — a necessary ingredient given the dozens of House Republicans opposed to continuing to fund Ukraine’s war.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
