US-Ukraine aid negotiated in Senate will not pass Congress: House speaker
The Republican speaker of the House of Representatives said Friday that Congress is not ready to approve renewal of US military aid crucial to Ukraine for its desperate fight against Russian invasion.
The Senate “appears unable to reach any agreement,” wrote Speaker Mike Johnson in a letter to lawmakers, adding that in any case his party would not give approval in the House, meaning it “would have been dead on arrival.”
The Senate had been closing in on a bipartisan deal that would provide massive new aid for pro-Western Ukraine’s military, which is about to enter its third year of fighting against the invasion launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
At the insistence of Republicans, President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party had agreed to attach to the aid bill a package of wide-ranging changes to security on the US-Mexico border.
The complex negotiations aimed at giving Republicans a key win on their demands to fight illegal migration across the border in exchange for maintaining Biden’s foreign policy goal of assisting Ukraine now appear to have collapsed.
This follows lobbying by Donald Trump, the former president and likely Republican nominee to contest the November presidential election.
Trump, who has questioned the US support for Ukraine’s war effort, has placed fear over illegal immigration at the heart of his platform.
This week he came out against the extensive border reforms being negotiated in the Senate, calling them “meaningless,” although senior Republicans said the proposed measures would mark the toughest new restrictions on border crossings in years.
Democrats narrowly control the Senate, while Republicans have their own slim majority in the House, with far-right Trump allies holding the balance of power there.
Johnson said Biden was responsible for a “border catastrophe” and said Republicans would seek to remove Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in an impeachment process starting next week.
A vote on impeaching Mayorkas will be held “as soon as possible,” Johnson wrote.
The Democratic-controlled Senate will all but certainly acquit Mayorkas, meaning he will not be forced from his job, which includes responsibility for border security.
No comments:
Post a Comment