House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said he will bring a Ukraine aid bill forward when Congress returns from its Easter recess during the week of April 7. Johnson said the bill must be bipartisan because the Republican majority is so thin. If GOP members try to pass a measure on their own, they can only lose one vote.
However, the Senate passed a $95 billion package for Ukraine and Israel in mid-February, which Johnson refused to bring up. So what changed? Lawmakers believe they now have better ways to pay for it.
Congress could pass the REPO Act, which gives the president the authority to confiscate Russian assets subject to U.S. jurisdiction and deposit them in the Ukraine Support Fund. The REPO Act already passed the Senate and appears to have growing support in the House.
“If we can use the seized assets of Russian oligarchs to allow the Ukrainians to fight them, that’s just pure poetry,” Johnson said on “Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy” on Fox.
The Department of Justice has worked to do something similar since the war began through Task Force KleptoCapture. The DOJ has restrained, seized, and obtained judgments to forfeit nearly $700 million from Russian oligarchs and others who have helped fund the war, including mega-yachts and millions in real estate at a Ritz Carlton near Miami.
Lawmakers are also considering making the aid a loan that would eventually be repaid if or when Ukraine is able to. Republicans in both the House and Senate have expressed support for such a measure.
“To our friends in Ukraine, we want to be there for you,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Feb. 12. “But we’re $34 trillion in debt. Let’s make it a loan, pass it back when you can, if you can.”
Democrats wanted to write Ukraine a check without extra funding measures. But Ukraine is running so low on ammunition and resources that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Ben Cardin, D-Md., now says he’d consider it.
“We’ve got to get help to Ukraine. If it starts as a loan, if we can’t do anything other than that, we might have to consider that. But this is in our national security interests,” Cardin said on “Meet the Press,” March 17.
The New York Times reported that a Ukraine aid package could be tied to a measure that would reverse President Joe Biden’s moratorium on new permits for liquified natural gas export facilities. That would give Republicans a political win on what has been a very divisive issue for the party.