The House of Representatives was in no rush this week to consider a Ukraine aid package that also provides billions to jumpstart a domestic uranium enrichment industry, the Speaker of the House said.
“We are not going to be forced into action by the Senate,” Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), the speaker, said Wednesday in a Capitol Hill news conference carried on C-Span.
Johnson said the Senate bill, which passed the upper chamber Tuesday with bipartisan support, “does not have one word in the bill about America’s border.”
Republican Senators last week banded together to sink a version of the bill that did contain bipartisan proposals to tighten border-control at the U.S.-Mexico crossing. Those Senators signaled their opposition after former President Donald Trump (R) the front runner for the Republican nomination, came out publicly against the bill.
Johnson said Wednesday the Senate’s border bill “did not meet the moment.”
So for now, the stripped-down version of the bill is in legislative limbo, along with the $2.7 billion it would provide for DOE contracts that could help the federal government acquire high assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU).
After the border policies were cut out, the Ukraine aid bill picked up a few votes in the Democrat-controlled Senate, passing the upper chamber 70-29 with 22 Republican votes and one abstention. Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.), who caucuses with Democrats, all voted no on the bill, alongside 26 Republicans. That’s better than the bill did in a procedural vote last week.
About two-thirds of the funding in the $95.3-billion bill is war aid for Ukraine, which Russia invaded again in 2022.
