Enough stalling: Get aid to Ukraine.
The Senate just passed a bipartisan bill to send Kyiv $60.1 billion and Israel $14.1 billion, along with other vital outlays to beef up Taiwan and the US defense industry.
The House should vote on it immediately.
And if Speaker Mike Johnson follows through on his threat to ignore it, Republicans must join Dems in filing a discharge petition to bring it to the floor anyway.
Many Republicans are digging their heels in, demanding that any aid bill include measures addressing the border crisis, and/or insisting on offsetting spending cuts.
As Johnson put it, “Any so-called national security supplemental legislation must recognize that national security begins at our own border.”
Fair enough in principle, but perfect is the enemy of good — and the need here is urgent.
This bill gets weapons into the hands of men and women fighting to keep Vladimir Putin’s war machine at bay.
Ukraine desperately needs help now: Norway’s intelligence agency warned Monday that Russia is gaining the upper hand, thanks in part to help from China, Iran and North Korea (and that Putin seems poised to launch an attack on NATO states within the next decade).
Only Washington can get Kyiv the weapons to hold on, and so prevent Putin from unleashing hell on the rest of Europe.
He has built up Russia’s arms industry and made it plain he’s planning for a bigger fight and won’t stop at Ukraine’s borders.
Abandoning Kyiv now means disaster for Europe and chaos for the entire world.
Does Johnson not want the bill on the floor because he doesn’t have the votes to kill it?
Despite the noise from the GOP right and the Dem left, the votes are there.
Sane Republicans and Democrats must put country before party, get the bill to the floor (and fend off delaying tactics like unseating the speaker to shut down the House) and pass it.
History is at a hinge here; squabbling and stubbornness must not prevail.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
