Congress could bypass block by GOP leaders for Ukraine funding
Just after dawn Tuesday, the Senate passed a $95 billion national security package with aid to Ukraine and Israel, setting up a showdown with the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson suggested he would not bring it up for a vote.
The bill passed the Senate 70-29, with 22 Senate Republicans breaking with their party and joining Democrats in pushing it through. But in the Republican-led House, rightwing opposition, fueled by former President Donald Trump, poses a steeper challenge.
Many hard-right Republicans have consistently voted against aiding Ukraine, and threatened to oust Johnson, R-La., if he brought up legislation to do so.
In a statement Monday night in the hours before the bill passed the Senate, Johnson said the House would “continue to work its own will” on national security and border policies, which Republicans had insisted be a part of the foreign aid package, before killing a bipartisan deal to address them.
That may mean that the bill's only path through the House is for a bipartisan group of lawmakers to use an obscure maneuver known as a discharge petition to force action on it.
Here's how it would work.
A MAJORITY OF THE HOUSE DEMANDS ACTION.
A discharge petition is a demand signed by 218 members of the House — a majority of the body — to force consideration of a piece of legislation on the floor.
The leaders of the majority party in the House normally control the floor and all legislative business
that receives a vote. But a discharge petition can circumvent the normal channels, forcing action on a bill that has the backing of enough members. Because neither party wants that to happen on a regular basis, it is by design an arduous and time-consuming process that has rarely seen success in recent decades.
When first-term lawmakers in the majority arrive on Capitol Hill for orientation, they are typically told by their leaders to never do two things: sign a discharge petition and vote against rules, which are procedural measures brought by party leaders that allow bills to be considered on the floor.
AN ARDUOUS PROCESS UNFOLDS.
Legislation must sit in a committee for 30 legislative days — days when the House is in session — before a discharge petition may be submitted. That process can be sped along if lawmakers take a related bill that has been languishing in committee for some time and add the measure they want acted upon. For instance, during a deadlock over raising the debt ceiling in the spring, Democrats readied a broadly encompassing shell bill in committee
to serve as a vehicle for a measure to lift the debt ceiling, should it be needed. (It never was, because Rep. Kevin McCarthy, then the speaker, joined with Democrats to push through the debt ceiling measure over his own party's objections.)
Sponsors of a discharge petition must gather 218 signatures, which are made public in the Congressional Record. As of Tuesday, there were 219 Republicans and 212 Democrats in the House, meaning a discharge petition on the foreign aid bill would require a bipartisan coalition. Democrats are broadly supportive of the package, as is a bloc of more mainstream and national security-minded Republicans similar to the one that helped push the legislation through the Senate.
THE MAJORITY EFFECTIVELY LOSES CONTROL OF THE FLOOR.
If the effort were successful, a discharge petition would allow lawmakers to steer around Johnson and hard-right Republicans who have vowed to block action on a Ukraine aid bill — or oust the speaker for bringing one up — to force action on the floor.