Speaker Johnson Must Allow a Vote on a Standalone Ukraine Bill Now

Johnson could add seizing Russian assets as a popular amendment to help pass the bill

Every day that the U.S. House of Representatives delays voting on the aid bill to Ukraine, more Ukrainians die, and more of Ukrainian energy infrastructure gets destroyed. This aid bill should have been approved last September. But it must be passed this month. Enough is enough.

As I wrote earlier here, if Biden, the Senate, the House, and the majority of Americans, as polls show support new aid to Ukraine, the way forward is simple – put a standalone bill on aid to Ukraine on the floor of both the House and Senate. Then let the up or down vote decide the outcome. Given that last September the House voted 311 to 117 in favor of continuing to provide security assistance to Ukraine, I am confident new aid will pass by a large majority. Having a clean, standalone vote on Ukraine is also important for American democracy. As states head into their primary elections, the American people deserve to know who is for and who is against aid to Ukraine before casting their ballots.  

The security advantages of new support for Ukraine to U.S. national interests in Europe and Asia – which I spell out in great detail here – are obvious. Giving the Ukrainians the weapons they need to stop Russia’s army in eastern Ukraine makes a future military confrontation between Russia and our NATO allies less likely. If Putin loses in Ukraine, Xi Jinping will think harder about taking the risky decision to invade Taiwan. And showing resolve to help Ukraine to stop Russia’s illegal, imperial invasion makes more credible our commitments to defend our allies and partners around the world. The converse is equally true. Letting Putin win in Ukraine increases the risk of military confrontation between Russia and a NATO ally. (For the details, read this piece from my trip to Lithuania earlier this year). Withdrawing aid now would confirm Xi’s hypothesis about the decline of U.S. power and thereby make military conflict over Taiwan more likely.

Source: Wikicommons

In addition, Ukraine’s reliance on U.S.-made weapons has created manufacturing jobs across the country and revitalized production lines of older weapons systems. As Marc Thiessen writes in The Washington Post, nearly 90 out of $68 million in Ukraine military aid went directly to “American defense companies that employ American workers to produce the weapons systems that Ukraine is using to fight Russia.” Thiessen’s team identified 117 production lines in 31 states and 71 cities. High demand for U.S.-made weapons will fuel our economy for decades to come. Shouldn’t Congresspeople work harder to preserve and create jobs for their constituencies?

But if that is not enough, Speaker Johnson could add a popular sweetener – seizing Russian assets currently frozen in the United States. By large majorities, the House and Senate committees recently voted in favor of the REPO Act – Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity for Ukrainians Act – that would transfer frozen Russian assets held at American banks to Ukraine for reconstruction. European countries hold a much greater share of the Russian assets than we do, around $360 billion. But if we take the lead in appropriating these frozen Russian funds, other countries will follow. That is real money that can help Ukraine fund its post-war reconstruction. We cannot ask American taxpayers for more billions for Ukraine until we have transferred these Russian billions first.

Passing a new aid bill to Ukraine as a standalone bill, amended with the REPO Act, could be the most important achievement for Michael Johnson in his term as a Speaker. He seems to even agree on this himself. Just recently, Johnson stated, “If we can use the seized assets of Russian oligarchs to allow the Ukrainians to fight them, that's just pure poetry.”

If, however, Speaker Johnson continues to block this important vote and thereby reward Putin, his place in our history books might be an embarrassing one, like that of American Firsters and Charles Lindbergh. And even if the militant MAGA minority in the House pushes him out of power as a punishment for allowing that vote, isn’t that still a better legacy – a legacy of being on the right side of history with Ukrainians – than being compared to isolationists who in the 1930s wrongly argued that Hitler’s war in Europe was not our problem?

I would prefer Johnson to simply do the right and righteous thing and allow a clean vote on the aid legislation that already passed in the Senate. But if that is too hard, adding the REPO Act to the aid bill gives Johnson the cover he needs to bring the House to the floor for a vote. The worst outcome would be no new legislation at all, detrimental not only to those fighting Putin—Ukrainians on the battlefield and Russian opposition – but the GOP as well. Failure to pass this legislation can make Trump, Johnson, and the entire Republican Party responsible for future losses of Ukrainian soldiers, civilians, and territory between now and November. And if Ukraine does not receive new military aid now, their losses could be devastating by Election Day. Maybe the hardcore supporters of Trump voters don’t care. But most Americans do (as polls show). Voters of Eastern European descent, many of whom live in swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, most certainly care.