What a long delay on foreign aid revealed

The system finally produced a result.

The extra months to pass aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan—and the separate votes for each—clarified a few things.

Congress finally held up-or-down votes on something important, meaning that whatever your view of the result, the process worked.

House Speaker Mike Johnson made the process work, though it took months and put his job at risk.

Johnson finally employed a mechanism by which the aid to each country was voted on separately and then placed into a single package. This allowed opponents of each measure to vent their views without any risk that those objecting would add up to enough votes to block the whole measure.

All three countries still have broad bipartisan support. But a majority of House Republicans went on record against aid to Ukraine.

Many Republicans cited the lack of border legislation as a reason to oppose Ukraine aid - but some didn’t apply that reason to the other foreign aid they supported. The vote tallies show it was a Ukraine-specific objection.

Republicans had previously blocked bipartisan border legislation, on an issue that is likely more central to their fall campaign.

Speaker Johnson had voted against Ukraine aid in the past. But as the House leader he had larger institutional responsibilities. He had to represent the desires of many Republicans to support Ukraine, whether their base voters wanted this or not. He also had a responsibility to the country. He finally said he was persuaded on the merits: “I can make a selfish decision,” he said, “but I’m doing here what I believe to be the right thing.” He said he believed the intelligence and other briefings he had received.

The technique he finally employed is an old one. The Compromise of 1850 passed a little like this: each of its components faced such bitter opposition that if voted on together they would fail. So lawmakers voted on them separately.

As a whole, the foreign aid bill of 2024 is far less divisive—big majorities backed every element of it—but a large and vocal part of one party wanted to sink a key element. Johnson and his allies, at least for the moment, broke free of them.

Thanks for reading Differ We Must, a companion to my book of the same name—which tells Lincoln’s life story through his meetings with people who differed with him.

Differ We Must on Amazon