With rare bipartisan momentum, the House pushed ahead Friday on a foreign aid package of $95 billion for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and humanitarian support as a robust coalition of lawmakers helped it clear a procedural hurdle to reach final votes this weekend.
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00:00On this vote, the yeas are 316, the nays are 94.
00:08The resolution is adopted.
00:10Without objection, a motion to reconsider is laid on the table.
00:13We are happy that the rule passed today, we look forward to final passage on the bill
00:18tomorrow.
00:19I think there's a couple of things that are important to remember here.
00:22We did not pass the Senate Supplemental Bill, the Senate was sent effectively as a blank
00:27check for foreign aid, and that is not, it did not comport with the policies or the process
00:32in the House.
00:33It was a better process to break the bills into four separate measures for consideration
00:38and that is what we will have tomorrow.
00:40Everyone can vote their will and their constituents' desires on the Israel aid, the Ukrainian aid,
00:46the Indo-Pacific, and then our fourth national security package that has all of our innovations
00:51in it.
00:52Because we did this process, we got a better outcome here.
00:54We have a lot of innovations that the Senate did not consider.
00:59We include the Repo Act, which as you know is the use of corrupt Russian oligarchs' assets
01:03to help fund the resistance in Ukraine.
01:05We introduced the loan concept for the governmental assistance part, it would be provided in a
01:10loan instead of a gift.
01:12We also included some really important sanctions on Russia and China and Iran, which I believe
01:17is the new axis of evil, and many of us do, and they are the ones who are the aggressors
01:21in this situation.
01:23The reality here is that if the House did not do this better policy and process, allowing
01:27for amendments on the floor in the process tomorrow, we would have had to eat the Senate
01:33supplemental bill and that is because we were very close, given the timeline in both Israel
01:40and Ukraine, to a discharge petition being brought.
01:43A discharge petition in layman's terms is that when a number of members or a majority
01:48of members get together, they can override the Speaker and bring something straight to
01:51the floor.
01:52That would have happened imminently on the Senate supplemental.
01:55So by doing this, even though it's not the perfect legislation, it's not the legislation
01:59that we would write if Republicans were in charge of both the House, the Senate and the
02:03White House, this is the best possible product that we can get under these circumstances
02:08to take care of these really important obligations.
02:11So we look forward to the vote tomorrow, we look forward to every member voting their
02:15conscience and their desire, and that is exactly how this process is supposed to work and how
02:20the House is supposed to operate.
02:21So we're happy to provide that.
02:22We'll give you more comment tomorrow.
02:23Thank you.