The House Ukraine bill is a defeat for populists

With a price tag of nearly $100 billion, a package of military aid to Ukraine, Israel and other American allies has just been passed by the United States House of Representatives. The triumph of this bill illustrates how a policy of burning-everything-in-the-way outrage actually blocks populist policies.

Many “establishment” Republicans on the Hill have spoken out against the financing of Ukraine and emphasized the need to end the border crisis. Instead, the Republican-controlled House has now passed a bill that implements the Biden administration’s key foreign policy goals — and populists have nothing on immigration.

Instead of blaming House Speaker Mike Johnson, populist Republicans could instead look to a splinter faction of the Republican Party that has insisted on wasting legislative power. Because of the central role Ukraine played in the Biden White House’s foreign policy, Democrats might ultimately have been able to pass a legislative package that combined border control measures with financing from Ukraine and Israel. Republicans could have struck a broader national security deal in the House of Representatives and then challenged the Democratic-controlled Senate not to act. The precedent would have been the 2023 debt ceiling standoff, in which Republicans in the House of Representatives passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling and forced Democrats out of the White House and Senate to the negotiating table.

Instead, recalcitrant populists in the House of Representatives engaged in judo against themselves. Instead of using the border to get funding for Ukraine, they used performative resistance to Ukraine’s funding to block action at the border. Speaker Johnson set the case recently bluntly: “If I put Ukraine in any package, it can’t also be at the border because I’m losing Republican votes on that line.”

That is, enough Republican backers had pledged to oppose financing Ukraine no matter what. The only way for Johnson to advance a piece of foreign aid legislation was to turn to Democrats in the House of Representatives, who would refuse to support any border control measures. Border security cannot therefore be part of a foreign aid package.

And the uncompromising holdouts sacrificed yet another point of leverage when a separate border security bill was voted on Saturday. GOP holdouts on the Rules Committee refused to support a rule for the border bill, and Democrats on the committee showed no sign of helping Republicans pass their immigration priority. As a result, the border bill could not pass and had to be tabled under suspension of the rules – meaning it needed a two-thirds majority to pass. The bill ultimately received 215 votes (to 199 against), so it would have passed if the Rules Committee had approved it. For example, a Republican Party splinter in the Rules Committee ensured that a border security bill was killed before it even reached the House as a whole.

This is a big failure. And maybe that’s the point. For some populists, this complete sacrifice of legislative influence may be a policy disappointment but also an opportunity to deliver a message. Perhaps the most prized trinket among many Republicans on Capitol Hill is a sign of angry defeat — won during the shutdowns and failed “Obamacare” repeals of the past. This debacle is another opportunity to rage against the uniparty, worry about betrayal by the Republican establishment, and mock the foreign policy of America Last.

Yet there is something hollow about this anger. While some of the most Trumpy Republicans on the Hill accuse Johnson of violating America First principles, Trump himself did not lobby against this bill in any public forum. Ahead of the vote, Trump complained that Europe should pay more, but also said defending Ukraine was “important to us.” If there’s one thing Trump is known for, it’s letting the world know when he’s unhappy, so his silence on Johnson’s funding project could be revealing. Both Trump’s critics and alleged emissaries may have a vision of “Trumpism” that differs from the reality of Donald Trump as a political actor.

In any case, the border debacle shines a bright light on the gulf between outrage politics optimized for social media clicks and the discipline required for a truly pro-worker agenda.