The House voted against another attempt at a standalone Israel aid bill on Tuesday, handing Speaker Mike Johnson another defeat during his rocky tenure with the gavel.
Mr. Johnson’s $17.6 billion emergency aid bill was sunk on a bipartisan vote, with House Republicans and Democrats joining forces — for vastly different reasons — to kill the foreign spending legislation.
The bill, which required two-thirds of the chamber to vote in favor of it, failed on a vote of 250 to 180, with 14 Republicans and 166 Democrats voting against it.
Mr. Johnson, Louisiana Republican, framed the measure as an emergency funding response to President Biden’s broader foreign aid package, which includes money for Ukraine and Taiwan. Republicans have proclaimed the president’s proposal to be on life support in the Senate and dead on arrival in the House.
“The heat has been turned up, and in that theater there, in that region, it’s a very, very serious matter,” Mr. Johnson said of the Middle East. “We need to stand with Israel, right now and we cannot wait any longer and that’s why desperate as times call for desperate measures, that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
Conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus voted against the latest bill because it did not include offset spending cuts, which the previously passed Israel-aid bill did.
House Democrats voted against the bill because they viewed it as an attempt to undermine Mr. Biden’s $118 billion foreign aid package.
Also emboldening Democrats’ decision to vote against the legislation was a veto threat from the White House, which portrayed the bill as a “cynical political maneuver.”
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Connecticut Democrat, said Republicans insisted that any foreign assistance bill must include border security, but have since rejected the Senate’s border deal that ties border security measures to Ukraine and Israel aid.
“This is a political stunt that makes it less likely that Israel gets its funds while endangering national security,” Ms. DeLauro said. “This accomplishes nothing, and delays aid getting out to our allies.”
But the larger aid package is teetering on the brink of failure in Congress. Rep. Mike Lawler, New York Republican, criticized Democrats who opposed the Israel-only bill in hopes of getting the larger package.
“To put all your eggs in that one basket right now, if the Senate bill doesn’t pass, and then you voted against the Israel aid package in the House, seems kind of foolish,” Mr. Lawler said.
Republicans pushed for more stringent border security measures to be included in Mr. Biden’s funding request, but now contend that the policies tacked onto the Senate legislation do not go far enough and would do little to curb the flow of migrants illegally crossing.
The long-awaited bill is all but doomed in Congress, with Republicans in the House and Senate publicly condemning it for failing to include more stringent border security measures derived from the House’s Secure the Border Act, or HR 2.
Rep. Max Miller, a staunch supporter of Israel who voted in favor of the standalone legislation, argued that the bill failed not because the House does not support Israel, but due to “the way the game was played.”
“Bad negotiating has led us to this point of where we currently are,” said Mr. Miller, Ohio Republican. “So the only way it gets worked out is for Johnson and [Senate Majority Leader Charles E.] Schumer to sit in a room and to figure out what border provisions they can tack on.”