(Washington) The American House of Representatives will vote on Saturday on texts releasing funds for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, the Republican head of the institution said on Wednesday, after repeated pressure from President Joe Biden.
“We expect the final vote on these bills to take place on Saturday evening,” he wrote in a letter to elected representatives of Congress, consulted by AFP.
Elected officials will vote on four texts, which have not yet been revealed.
Aid to Ukraine will include “an aid loan mechanism,” the Republican leader said.
Entangled in partisan disputes, Congress has been struggling for months over the adoption of funds for Kyiv, at war with Russia since February 2022.
Biden op-ed
US President Joe Biden has repeatedly urged elected officials to adopt a military and humanitarian assistance package without delay.
Wednesday morning, he reiterated his call in a column in the Wall Street Journal.
The American House of Representatives “must urgently adopt” bills on new aid to Ukraine and Israel and on humanitarian aid for Gaza, called on the Democratic leader.
“While both countries are fully capable of defending their own sovereignty, they depend on American aid, including arms, to do so. And we are at a pivotal moment,” he wrote in the daily.
The White House provided cautious support for these new projects on Tuesday.
Before President Joe Biden gave his frank support to the texts.
“Both Ukraine and Israel are under attack from impudent enemies who seek their annihilation,” he said in his column.
Russian President Vladimir Putin “wants to subjugate the Ukrainian people and absorb their nation into a new Russian empire,” he added, also believing that “the Iranian government wants to destroy Israel, and thus wipe off the map forever the only Jewish State in the World.”
“America must never accept any of these results,” asserted Joe Biden.
Motion of censure
Ukraine is desperately short of ammunition in its war against Russia and American funds are exhausted.
Israel, for its part, faced a direct and unprecedented attack from Iran on the night of Saturday to Sunday, in the context of high regional tensions.
A package of $60 billion in military and economic assistance for Ukraine was adopted in the Senate in February. But Republicans in the House of Representatives refused to consider the text – due, among other things, to a dispute over the issue of immigration.
If it is adopted by the Republican-majority House, the batch of texts which must be unveiled on Wednesday will then be studied by the Democratic-majority Senate, before possibly arriving on Joe Biden’s desk for promulgation.
Mike Johnson’s announcement was rejected by some of his Republican colleagues, reviving the possibility of a censure motion and a new crisis in the House. His predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, was dismissed last year after a rebellion by the Trumpist wing of his party.
Mike Johnson plunged the Republican Party “into chaos by serving the Democrats and adopting Biden’s agenda,” elected official Marjorie Taylor Greene criticized on X.
“Now he is going to finance wars abroad,” she added. He “must announce a date for his resignation and allow Republicans to elect a new one to put America first and pass a Republican agenda.”
The “speaker” ruled out any voluntary departure.
“I will not resign,” Mike Johnson told the press, deeming the threat of filing a motion of censure “absurd”.