The US Congress has spared itself another public finance crisis before the holidays. Now aid to Ukraine and Israel threatens to become the political end-of-year confrontation.
House Speaker Mike Johnson reached an agreement with Democrats on Tuesday to keep the federal government open and a shutdown to avert. He did exactly what cost his predecessor Kevin McCarthy the gavel earlier. But Johnson, speaker of the House of Representatives for just three weeks, his most radical Republican party colleagues are getting away with it – for the time being.
With a temporary financing law, the budgets of the various ministries will continue for more than two months. Without the cuts or measures at the southern border desired by Republicans. Aid to Ukraine and Israel is also lacking.
Honeymoon
Like McCarthy, Johnson had to choose between serving the most radical wing of his party, against which his views and voting behavior rub shoulders, and a compromise. A Republican budget cut proposal would not be accepted by Democrats, who control the Senate and the White House, and would therefore result in a government shutdown. Johnson did not want such a shutdown to be his first political act as chairman and came up with a proposal acceptable to Democrats to postpone the budget discussion to January.
“We don’t surrender, we fight,” Johnson said. “But you have to be smart about which fights you choose. You have to fight the battle you can win.”
The Senate agreed on Thursday and President Joe Biden signed the relief bill on Friday. Both Biden and senators would have preferred longer certainty about the budgets, but agreed to the proposal. Nearly half of Johnson’s own group voted against, more than when McCarthy did the same in September. But unlike then, there were no calls for the chairman to be dismissed during his honeymoon.
What Johnson explicitly did not do – an omission that Democrats accept – is arrange support for Ukraine and Israel. Biden has asked Congress to release $105 billion for Ukraine ($61.4 billion) and Israel ($14.3 billion), among others. This package also includes money for measures at the border with Mexico, where thousands of migrants manage to cross every day.
The reason why Biden combined these three goals – all of which should be able to count on a majority – is so that Republicans in the House can prevent a separate plan for Ukraine from being voted on at all.
A majority of the Republican House faction no longer wants to send money to Ukraine. Johnson made a counteroffer that only funds aid to Israel. He proposes to link this with a cut in tax inspectors – which, according to experts, would cost the treasury money in lost tax revenues. That made it easy for Democrats to oppose it.
Support for Ukraine is running out
Johnson promised to also arrange financing for Ukraine “in the short term”, but the question is how. (When he was not yet chairman, he voted against.) The need is now great, the Biden administration says. A White House spokesperson said that of the $113 billion in aid the US has sent to Ukraine since the start of the war in February 2022 has almost been spent. Ukraine depends on the US to maintain its resistance to the Russian invasion. If a new aid package is not approved before the end of the year, Ukraine, and therefore Europe, will have an acute problem.
Congress is now on recess until the end of November. In the four weeks after Thanksgiving and before Christmas, it will become clear whether Johnson can also reach a compromise on Ukraine or whether he is politically more interested in dropping Ukraine.