Credit: (Edwin J. Torres/NJ Governor’s Office)WASHINGTON — Officials of U.S. allies in Europe are so focused on military aid for Ukraine that they follow votes in the House and discuss obscure congressional procedures, including a little-used maneuver House Democrats may implement in the coming weeks, according to Rep. Mikie Sherrill.
Sherrill (D-11th), who returned last week from a trip to a security conference in Germany that included stops in Egypt, Jordan and Israel, said the window for passing legislation to support Ukraine in its war effort against the Russian military is closing.
Without more U.S. military aid, Ukraine may lose the war to Russia, said Sherrill, a member of the House Armed Services Committee.
“At some point, without our support, it’s hard to see how Ukraine can prevail,” Sherrill told reporters on a call Friday. “We’re running out of time.”
As Russia’s war against Ukraine enters its third year, support for U.S. military aid for Ukraine is flagging in Congress, and House Democrats are mulling plans to force a vote to send funding to the war-ravaged nation.
About 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia’s invasion, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said Sunday.
Trump’s sway
On Feb. 13, the Senate passed legislation (HR 815) by a 70-29 vote that would provide about $95 billion in foreign aid, including $60 billion for Ukraine, much of which would be used to purchase weapons from U.S. companies that would then be used in combat. Israel and Taiwan would also receive billions in funding.
Speaker Mike Johnson, the Louisiana Republican who leads the House, criticized the bill before it passed and he has voted against Ukraine funding as a rank-and-file member of the chamber.
While 22 Republicans voted for the Senate bill, Republican support in the House, where former President Donald Trump holds sway over the speaker, has been tepid.
Democrats are strategizing over how to overcome the impasse in the House, including by potentially forcing a vote through a version called a “discharge petition,” a rare tactic.
With a discharge petition, members in the House can push legislation to the full chamber if they get 218 signatures — a simple majority of the 435 seats in the House — after the bill has been in committee for a minimum of 30 days.
‘At some point, without our support, it’s hard to see how Ukraine can prevail.’ — Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-11th)
Since the mid-1990s, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, discharge petitions have twice reached the number of signatures needed: for campaign finance legislation in 2002 and for a bill in 2015 to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, a quasi-independent federal agency.
Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-9th) said last week Democrats would introduce a discharge petition for Ukraine aid, but he did not specify when or what bill would be used.
White House meeting
President Joe Biden met Tuesday with congressional leaders of both parties, including Johnson, to discuss Ukraine aid, urging the House to pass the Senate bill. “The consequences of inaction every day in Ukraine are dire,” Biden said, according to a White House pool report.
Sherrill said she supports whatever legislation can become law. But as the presidential election looms and Congress has other tasks to complete, like the federal budget, the Senate bill seems the most feasible choice, she said.
“I don’t think there’s another way forward,” Sherrill said. “Things don’t get easier as you get closer to the election.”
European leaders follow what the House does, even mentioning the arcane discharge petition at the Munich Security Conference, Sherrill said.
“They’re concerned about our ability in the House to pass the supplemental,” she said. “They track a lot of what goes on in the House quite closely.”
Votes by this Congress for Ukrainian assistance have drawn comfortable majorities in the House, with most Democrats and dozens of more traditional Republicans voting in favor. “We know that in the House we’ve traditionally had about 300 votes on Ukrainian aid,” Sherrill said.
But a discharge petition organized by the Democrats would likely bring the wrath of Trump against GOP members who support the measure.
In the White House, Trump was a vocal critic of NATO, the trans-Atlantic military alliance that has countered Russian threats and helped retain peace since World War II.
Anti-NATO tones
Running for his old job, Trump has struck the same anti-NATO tones. At a campaign rally in South Carolina this month, Trump said the U.S. would not defend NATO member states if they don’t contribute enough money to the alliance.
“Look, if they’re not going to pay, we’re not going to protect. OK?” said Trump, who encouraged Russia to “do whatever the hell they want.”
The confirmed number of civilians killed since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, reached more than 10,200, including 575 children, the U.N. humanitarian office’s operations director, Edem Wosornu, said to the U.N. Security Council in January.
From 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea, a region in southeastern Ukraine, until late 2023, the U.S. has allocated more than $47 billion to Ukraine, according to the State Department.
Military funding for Ukraine is a sizable but relatively small portion of the Pentagon’s budget.
Congress approved roughly $859 billion for the Defense Department’s budget for the latest fiscal year available and requested $886 billion for the current budget year.
