The United States Congress is mysterious as hell:
Speaker Mike Johnson told Politico that he expects to pass a future Ukraine assistance bill with Democratic votes, an acknowledgment of the persistent resistance to any new aid within the GOP.... “I think it is a stand-alone, and I suspect it will need to be on suspension,” Johnson said of foreign assistance.
Why would a Ukraine bill have to be on the suspension calendar? This is a procedure that fast tracks a bill by eliminating committee approvals and debate, at the cost of requiring a two-thirds vote.
But I don't get why Johnson needs to do this. He can move a bill anytime he wants, and Ukraine aid would surely get out of the Rules Committee pretty easily. Its chair, Rep. Tom Cole, supports it, and a normal rule wouldn't allow much more debate than suspension.
I'm sure there's some parliamentary minutiae I'm missing, but what? Ukraine aid has broad bipartisan support, so all Johnson has to do is get out of the way and let it come up for a vote. What's the deal here?
Discussing Republicans and Ukraine without even mentioning Trump?
Am I the only one that thinks this is an absurd?
Maybe it's Kabuki so the Krayzee Kidz Kaucus can complain to their slavering cultists that he somehow pulled a fast one, and this is their price for not moving to vacate the chair?
Forget it Kevin. It's MAGAtown.
+1
maybe not exactly this, but it certainly rhymes with 'freedomcaucusfuckery'
Love the last line, not least because it has me picturing Johnson walking around with a big bandage on his nose.
+1
Is it possible that he's doing this because he knows the votes are there for a discharge petition, and he wants to forestall that in order to maintain control of the House?
A discharge petition is a device for forcing a vote against the opposition of the speaker. But Johnson is the speaker, and can allow a vote whenever he likes (as Kevin points out).
But what if he doesn't want to allow a vote, but thinks he has no choice because otherwise the vote would be forced on him. A discharge petition takes the gavel away from him. Calling the vote himself allows him to maintain some measure of control.
+1
Suspension of the rules would require 75 R votes to pass. Seems pretty likely.
A discharge petition takes the gavel away from him. Calling the vote himself allows him to maintain some measure of control.
Maybe. But AFAIK there's nothing to stop a discharge petition from happening in any event, regardless of what Johnson does. IOW, supporters of Ukraine aren't stupid, and surely realize a 2/3 vote requirement is a higher hurdle, and can force a second bite at the apple if they can find 50%+1.
"requiring a two-thirds vote"
Cynical me suggests this is just playing games to look like the GOP House is trying to do things. Just muck up the system for a while. Less cynical me says Johnson is thinking that if two-thirds of House members vote for the aid, then it deserves to pass. I suppose that is extending way too much good will toward Johnson in this MAGA era.
Progress, re: your latter comment -- I want some of whatever you are smoking
Just a couple more hits, then I'll sober up.
If it goes through the Rules Committee, the bill will only require a majority of the House to pass when it gets to the floor. By doing it this way, it will require 2/3 of the House, which Johnson hopes it won't get through combined opposition of pro-Russia Republicans and anti-Israel Democrats. Kevin, I don't think you're cynical enough to understand Republican politics.
This too makes sense. And it gives him more ways to duck the issue.
bingo
By doing it this way, it will require 2/3 of the House, which Johnson hopes it won't get through combined opposition of pro-Russia Republicans and anti-Israel Democrats.
This is possible. For the Speaker, "Bill fails to pass the House" is politically preferable to "Mike Johnson killed Ukraine funding."
It's also possible Johnson personally (and privately) favors Ukraine aid, and thinks a 2/3rds majority will emphatically demonstrate how isolated the MAGA core is on this issue.
I really have no idea what the prospects for House passage are. Also, do we know if the measure will include other priorties such as aid for Taiwan or Israel?
He can’t get anything through the rules committee because McCarthy put three nut jobs on there that block everything. All of the major legislation Johnson has pushed through has used the suspension process.
Just because it's "protocol" for Democrats to vote against the Rule, doesn't mean they HAVE to vote against the Rule. If the Rule will get Ukraine aid passed, violate the norm!
One of the gifts that Kevin McCarthy gave to the Freedom Caucus loons was a disproportionate number of seats on the Rules Committee. Didn't get him any forbearance from the loons, of course, but Johnson inherited that. So, even if he wants to bring a Ukraine aid vote to the floor to cut off the embarrassment of a discharge petition, he'd either need Democratic votes on the rule or convince several of the looniest loons to go along with the idea. Neither is likely, hence the talk of bringing to the floor under a suspension of rules.
This, and he can try and say it's not his fault when it passes.
Let's see what they actually do...
Also lets the Squeaker of the House leave out Gaza aid, and cut Ukraine funds, compared to the Senate bill that the discharge petition would put on the floor.
It's basic arithmetic, KD. The rules committee has 13 members so 7 makes a majority. Four members are Ds; the minority role on this committee is always to vote no, the same way the minority always votes no when rules come to the floor.
Of the 9 R members, NellieC and dmsilev point out that 3 are MAGA. Subtract those 3 from the R total and you're left with 6. And that's why Johnson can't have nice things.
It's a prime example why Charlie Sykes always called the deals McCarthy made in order to become speaker a "self-gelding." He gave up his ability to control the rules, which has always been a major source of a speaker's strength.
Johnson could be trying to head off a discharge petition, which would be one kind of humiliation. He could conceivably also be trying to protect the Rs who would sign a discharge from having to expose their names-- some may still have primaries, others could face MAGA revolts in the fall that would shrink R chances of keeping the House. There could be other reasons to opt for suspension, like it might be able to get through faster because discharge can be slow; I just don't know the ins and outs (but things are dire in Ukraine and the Pentagon announced that the loose change it just managed to scrounge up in the couch cushions is all there is, there ain't no more).
I think whatever reasons he might have mostly depend on whether Johnson is just a garden-variety MAGA shtheel or might be taking leadership more seriously now that he's hanging around half the time with people who are old pros at it and take it to heart (in his own idiosyncratic way, in one case). Jury's out on that one
The discharge petition filed on Tuesday, as of the end of Wednesday, had 177 of the 218 signatures needed to get a vote on the Senate bill. Because it contains funding for Israel, a lot of liberal Democrats are declining to sign it, so a few dozen Republicans will need to sign it. Haven't seen any so far -- it doesn't seem like the discharge petition will work.
This suggests that Johnson's suspension is referring to bills out of Republican committees that he thinks will be able to get enough votes from Rs and Ds. Doing so allows him to stop the amendment vote process that could bog down the bill(s) by inserting poison pills meant to get Ds to bail.
Of course, the problem here is that Rs don't have any bills to speak of that are ready to be moved forward. The House enjoys taking leisurely strolls through the halls of the Capitol gesticulating and yelling while carrying large signs decrying the plight of the Conservative, rather than work on bills.
If funding for Israel is what's needed to get aid for Ukraine passed, the liberal Democrats should sign. Funding for Israel isn't going to make or break Israel, but funding for Ukraine may well be the difference between defeat and victory.
If Big Mike Johnson puts a bill on the floor to provide military aid to Ukraine, without requiring an extra 15 YEARS worth of Israel's usual handout all at once in the same bill, I will be amazed. To do so, he and all the rest of his caucus would first need to block The Defendant's phone number.
I'll go with Occam's razor on this one: Johnson is an idiot and has no idea what he is doing.
It looks to me like Johnson has gone way beyond the Hastert rule, which says that nothing comes to a vote unless a majority of the majority party supports it. The Johnson rule seems to be that nothing comes to a vote unless the majority party nearly unanimously supports it. It's not entirely clear how many Rs need to be opposed to block a bill, but it doesn't seem to be a large number.
There are a large number of R reps that support aid to Ukraine. I would suspect that one or more of them informed Johnson that he either allows a vote on aid to Ukraine or he faces a motion to vacate from the "moderate" end of the caucus.
"I'm sure there's some parliamentary minutiae I'm missing, but what?"
You should ask Congresswoman Greene, she's in charge of the House now.