Democrat and Republican supporters of Ukraine aid are making another effort to bring a bill to the House floor. They are using a parliamentary device known as a "discharge petition" to do an end run around the GOP House leadership.
It's just short of a Hail Mary pass. The last successful discharge petition was in 2015. In the case of the Ukraine aid package, it would include military assistance to Israel which many Democrats find problematic.
“What we are asking our colleagues — Democrats and Republicans — is to sign the discharge petition that will bring to the floor the Senate national security bipartisan supplemental,” Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said Tuesday. “That is the fastest and easiest way to solve this issue.”
The bid to give more military aid to Ukraine has been complicated by a Republican discharge petition introduced by Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.). Unlike the Senate bipartisan bill that would be considered if the discharge petition were successful, the Fitzpatrick bill would include aid for Ukraine and several U.S. border security measures that Republicans have supported in the past.
Most Republicans believe no Ukraine aid can pass without U.S. border security.
“It is an unsustainable argument, either in the short-term or the long-term, that we’re going to defend the borders of our foreign allies but not our own,” Fitzpatrick said last week.
“Right now, ours is the only one that has bipartisan support,” Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), one of the lead sponsors of the Fitzpatrick bill, told reporters. “There’s no support for the Senate-passed bill when it comes to a strategy focused on a discharge petition.”
Indeed, Democrats would likely derail any aid package that included aid to Israel without massive strings attached. It's not even clear that Israel would accept aid with the restrictions being sought by pro-Palestinian Democrats.
Yet Democratic leaders are warning that Ukraine — which is under siege from Russian forces and running low on ammunition — simply doesn’t have the time to wait for Congress to bounce competing bills back and forth between the two chambers.
“These are well-meaning members. But we disagree that that is the right solution,” Aguilar said of those pushing Fitzpatrick’s approach. “Under any scenario, that bill, that discharge, would force a vote on something that still has to go to the U.S. Senate. And that could take weeks or months to deliver the critical aid that’s necessary.
“Ukraine is out of time. I mean, they are literally out of time,” House Rules Committee ranking Democrat Jim McGovern said. “So, you know, we hope that this increases the pressure on the speaker.”
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Speaker Mike Johnson is not immune to pressure. But he has his own headaches when it comes to Ukraine aid. Donald Trump has apparently decided, for whatever reason, to allow Russia to win in Ukraine and will oppose bringing Ukraine aid to the floor under any circumstances.
So far, the McGovern discharge petition has 86 signatures of the 218 needed to bring it to the floor. The Fitzpatrick petition has only 9 signatures.
“They’re not even getting every Democrat to sign that,” Fitzpatrick told the Washington Examiner. “So that’s a nonstarter.”
“Fitzpatrick’s bill is a nonstarter for us for a whole bunch of reasons,” McGovern said. “And this has to go back to the Senate. So, I mean … time is of the essence. Sending a new bill with new stuff, sending that back to the Senate, God only knows what will happen if it goes back there.”
Fitzpatrick claimed that McGovern and those who agree with him don't have the whole picture.
“They don’t know our final text. They’re only commenting on our bare-bones language that we’ve introduced,” Fitzpatrick said. “But the way the rule is written, we’re gonna get one massive amendment in the nature of a substitute that can include a lot of their priorities. So it’s a bipartisan approach. It’s the only one in the House.”
The pro-Ukraine funding lobby can't even agree on a strategy to pass a bill. Meanwhile, Ukraine may be forced to sue for a bitter peace.
