House Fixin' To Pass Ukraine Aid Package After All. Thanks, Speaker Jeffries!
Getting ahead of myself? By how much?
After months of inaction and insistence that military aid to Ukraine can only be allowed after all undocumented immigrants in the US are converted into Soylent Taylor Green (or that it must be matched by equivalent aid to Russia, maybe), the House just all of a sudden passed a procedural motion Friday that should enable passage of a $95 billion foreign aid package of military aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, as well as humanitarian funds to Gaza. Yeah, even that, somehow!
It was the first known successful vote on anything in the House since the time of the Hawley-Smoot Tariff, as we recall. Or it just felt like that.
To pass the rule with a vote total of 316-94, House Speaker Mike Johnson needed the support of Democrats, since many Republicans are opposed on principle to doing their jobs as legislators. One hundred sixty-five of the yeas came from Democrats, and just 151 from Republicans.
The ranking Democrat on the Rules Committee, Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, said, “Democrats, once again, will be the adults in the room,” but he also rebuked the MAGA wing of the Republican Party, which is all of it:
“I would just say to my colleagues, ‘Look at what MAGA extremism has gotten you: nothing. Nothing, not a damn thing.’ […]
“But you don’t get an award around here for doing your damn job.”
In related news, several House Republicans who voted for the bill demanded awards, at least a cookie or a pizza party since they have to work Saturday.
The package is almost but not quite the same as the foreign aid bill passed by the Senate in February, but which the House sat on forever because of very serious reasons that no Republicans could quite articulate, at least not without using the Cyrillic alphabet. But instead of a single bill, Johnson broke it into four bills, so some whiny Republicans could say they voted for aid to Israel but against aid to Ukraine, and that way they can still hold their heads high when Vladimir Putin pins a medal on them.
The four bills are nonetheless expected to pass in a session on Saturday, and let us just make clear that we are writing this Friday afternoon before that happens, so once again we wish you well in the future, when those four votes may or may not have taken place when this is published. We hope the people of your time (Saturday) will remember us with compassion, for we tried our best, and in many ways are just like you, since we will be you in a number of hours, Crom willing.
If the world blows up before then, we’ll look pretty silly, now won’t we?
Anyhow, once the bills pass in the House, they’ll need to go back to the Senate for passage, which should actually be easy even if Rand Paul demands a vote on an amendment to only transfer military aid to the other countries after the US goes back on the gold standard and the EU discontinues use of the metric system.
President Biden has endorsed the package, and some Republicans plan to vote for it even so. As of Friday afternoon, Donald Trump hasn’t signaled that MAGA Republicans should vote against it, possibly because he is still farting in his sleep in a Manhattan courtroom. Rightwing media have vociferously denied this new evidence of connections between Trump and Pootin’.
Again, if Trump wakes up and demands the bills be defeated after we submit this post and Yr Editrix clicks “schedule,” that’s no skin off our nose, which was already sandblasted to the bone and cartilage in the previous paragraph.
Now that Johnson has gone and done the unthinkable, i.e., his job, the extreme Dippies McShitferbrains in the Freedom Caucus may go ahead with their threat to try forcing Johnson out of the speakership, because he got a thing accomplished, and with the help of Democrats, which is so horrifying that for all we know some of the Freedom cockups may rethink their support for all military spending, which is now tainted by Democratic support.
The House is now expected to return to its other important work, trying to impeach Joe Biden and get invited to appear on Fox News.
PREVIOUSLY!
[AP / CNN / ABC News / BoingBoing]
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Being anti-Ukraine or even neutral makes you pro-Russia. Having grown up during the Cold War, I never thought I'd live to see this day
“Rightwing media have vociferously denied this new evidence of connections between Trump and Pootin’.”
Wonkette: come for the dick jokes, stay for the dad jokes. Well played, Dok.