House Will Vote On A Ukraine Aid Bill, Johnson Says, But Specifics Still Hazy

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va. — The House will vote on a bill to provide much-needed weapons to Ukraine in its war with Russia, but the contours of such a bill still need to be worked out, according to a report.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), in an interview with Politico , said he expects aid to Ukraine and Israel would come to the floor either tied together or as two separate stand-alone bills.

“I think it is a stand-alone, and I suspect it will need to be on suspension,” Johnson was quoted as saying, referring to the floor process used where a bill requires two-thirds support in order to be approved.

Johnson was in West Virginia with his fellow House Republicans for an annual policy and politics retreat at the Greenbrier resort.

Johnson’s “stand-alone” phrasing, however, does not mean the bill would simply be an up or down vote on whether to provide, as President Joe Biden proposed, about $48 billion in military aid and another $8 billion or so in economic aid to help Kyiv pay its bills. It’s likely some other stuff would be in the package as well.

In a session with reporters Thursday, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said the bill “would have our impramateur, the House version” instead of simply being the Senate bill that arrived with aid for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and humanitarian assistance for war-torn Gaza.

McCaul said he had been working with leaders of the House Intelligence and Armed Services Committees, as well as the lawmakers in control of funding on a bill.

One thing McCaul said he wanted was the so-called REPO Act, a bill that would confiscate the frozen assets in the U.S. and elsewhere that belong to the Russian government.

Such a move would be a major change and one critics say could get