The legislative process in Congress can be a long and winding road, often marred by delays, detours and multi-car crashes. President Biden’s Oct. 9 request to Congress last year for $106 billion in emergency supplemental appropriations for security assistance to Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and our southern border has been the victim of all of the above.
The request came in a nationally televised address from the Oval Office. The day after the address, the president’s press office issued a “Fact Sheet: White House Calls on Congress to Advance Critical National Security Priorities.”
The president may have thought that combining four disparate matters into a single bill would be strategically wise since most members could support at least one or two of the pieces and therefore be willing to go along with the rest. Instead of consolidate and conquer, however, the maneuver turned into a divide and defeat disaster. Congress is much more riven today than it was back when Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee (1987-95), or when he later chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) took the first step by addressing the Israel piece of the president’s request. He had Appropriations’ Committee Chair Kay Granger (R-Texas) introduce the bill on Nov. 1, and called it up on the floor the next day; it passed, 226-196.
Johnson was already constrained by his own party colleagues from doing more. Former President Trump had put the kibosh on dealing with U.S. border security while Biden was in the White House, and Johnson’s “America First” colleagues opposed any further aid to Ukraine. Notwithstanding its initial House passage, the Israel aid bill did not fare well in the Senate. On Nov. 14 a motion to proceed to its consideration was tabled, 51-48.
In early February 2024, the Senate took up a minor House-passed veterans’ bill (H.R. 815) with the aim of substituting it for the president’s supplemental request. The first vote occurred on all four pieces of the Biden package, including a strong, bipartisan border security compromise forged by Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and others. The Senate rejected a motion to proceed to its consideration. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) subsequently offered a substitute containing only the foreign aid portions of the president’s request, which passed, 70-29.
When the bill arrived back in the House from the Senate, Speaker Johnson exercised his prerogative to hold the bill at the desk — a freeze-in-place move. With the Senate leader and House Speaker at loggerheads, a path opened for two House procedural entrepreneurs, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), to enter the fray by filing competing discharge petitions on Tuesday, March 12.
A discharge petition is a motion filed at the clerk’s desk providing for the consideration of: (1) a bill that has been introduced and pending for at least 30 legislative days; or (2) a special rule, pending for at least seven days that provides for consideration of such a bill. Once a majority of House Members (218) has signed the petition, the motion is privileged to be called-up on the floor after another seven legislative days.
Discharge petitions are seldom successful. According to data compiled by Brookings Institution senior fellow Sarah Binder, of the over 639 discharge petitions introduced from 1935 to 2022, roughly 4 percent have been successful. Binder estimates another 4 percent achieved the desired result by forcing action on the targeted bills utilizing different procedures.
McGovern, the ranking Democrat on the House Rules Committee, and Fitzpatrick, co-chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus, had roughly the same idea. They both introduced discharge petitions on special rules that provided for consideration of shell bills having nothing to do with the president’s aid package. However, each bill would serve as a base for the automatic adoption of an amendment in the nature of a substitute containing all (or part of) the president’s assistance request. A “self-executing rule” simultaneously adopts an amendment with the vote on the rule.
The main difference is that McGovern is not publishing the substance of his substitute package, though he’s told the press it will be similar to the Senate-passed version. Under the terms of the rule, the substitute need not be unveiled until a day before its consideration if printed in the Congressional Record by the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.
Fitzpatrick’s rule does specify the exact language of his self-executed substitute amendment. It will be the text of H.R. 7372, a bill that he and a bipartisan group of cohorts introduced back in February, covering all four pieces of the president’s request with some modifications. Notwithstanding McGovern’s playing it close to the vest with his “pig in a poke” ploy, he had amassed 185 signatures as of Wednesday, whereas Fitzpatrick had only signed-on 15 members.
Meantime, Speaker Johnson is reportedly anguishing over inaction on aid to Ukraine and is trying to find a way to get it passed, possibly using the suspension process requiring a two-thirds vote. He knows it’s risky to proceed since some in the GOP’s isolationist wing have threatened a motion “to vacate the Chair” (oust him) if he schedules a Ukraine vote. He will reportedly not make a move on Ukraine until after completion of all the regular appropriations’ bills — a process that’s been wracked by its own history of travails over the last six months.
As for the president’s emergency aid package, it has indeed been a long and winding road filled with all manner of perils, pitfalls and potholes, and possibly more harrowing hairpin turns ahead.
Don Wolfensberger is a 28-year House staff veteran culminating as Rules Committee chief-of-staff in 1995. He is author of, “Changing Cultures in Congress: From Fair Play to Power Plays” (2018).