Washington
CNN
—
The Senate’s vote on Tuesday to approve new aid to Ukraine follows six months of public pressure by the White House to build support, including the important task of winning support from House Speaker Mike Johnson. It put an end to personal efforts.
Mr. (he was under pressure from the United States). Government officials said the impact of the battlefield was significant.
Addressing the leadership dynamics in the House Republican conference that are increasingly resistant to additional aid, Biden is taking every possible opportunity to force his team to directly explain to Johnson the consequences of their inaction. instructed. That included warnings about what Russian President Vladimir Putin’s success would mean not only for Ukraine but also for Europe and the United States, administration officials said. Ta.
The president specifically asked his team to provide intelligence agencies with a complete picture of the battlefield situation in Ukraine and discuss the national security implications for the United States in conversations with the chairman and staff, officials said. requested. The push began with Johnson’s status conference the day after he became chairman and unfolded over the next six months.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Director of Management and Budget Sharanda Young spoke to the Speaker and other key members of Congress about how aid to Ukraine is drying up and the country’s efforts to fight Russia are at risk. explained. Mr. Biden stopped by the meeting and spoke with Mr. Johnson, delivering a similar message. Mr. Sullivan called Mr. Johnson four days later to highlight the steps being taken to track aid in Ukraine.
However, Prime Minister Johnson quickly made it clear that support for Ukraine and separation of Israel were necessary. This approach is opposed by the White House and will be tested multiple times in the coming months.
The test came Tuesday when the Senate passed a $95 billion foreign aid package, including nearly $61 billion for Ukraine, a long-sought goal for Biden, who has spent the past two years rallying Western support for the war-torn country. It ended with a victory in foreign policy. In the fight against Russia. At the same time, the president is also fighting his own battle back home to win approval for more aid amid pushback from some Republicans. Biden signed a bill Wednesday morning that provides more than $26 billion for Israel and humanitarian aid and more than $8 billion for the Indo-Pacific region, including Taiwan.
In a speech marking the bill’s passage, he noted the long process of passing the aid, saying, “I want to thank all the Democrats, Republicans, and independents who voted for this bill.” The path to my desk was a difficult one. It should have been easier and we should have arrived sooner. But in the end, we did what America always does: We rose to the moment and came together to get it done. ”
As Biden prepares to ask Congress for new funding, he used a prime-time Oval Office speech in mid-October to compare the fight between Ukraine and Russia with an earlier war with Israel and Hamas. The government sought to advocate strong support measures from an early stage.
“Hamas and President Putin represent different threats, but they have one thing in common: They both seek to completely annihilate, completely obliterate, the democracies of their neighbors,” Biden said in his speech. “We can’t let petty partisan, angry politics get in the way.” Our responsibility as a great nation. We cannot and will not let terrorists like Hamas or tyrants like Putin win. ”
Less than a week after that speech, the White House was faced with the task of working with a new House speaker who was relatively unknown and had previously voted against aid to Ukraine as a rank-and-file member.
The president will be in regular contact with Johnson, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, an avid supporter of increased aid to Ukraine. I ordered the team to do so.
Another early directive from the president to his team was to try to refrain from targeted attacks on Johnson as much as possible, and instead focus on the greater need for Republicans to act and create opportunities for productive conversations. I was hoping to be given more space.
“He just kept saying, ‘Keep talking. Keep working.’ Keep looking for ways to resolve differences. And that was his instruction,'” said Steve, a presidential adviser.・Ricchetti said.
Mr. Ricchetti and Legislative Director Schwanza Goff served as key conduits between the White House and Mr. Johnson and his team. Mr. Ricchetti has spoken regularly with Mr. Johnson over the past four weeks and traveled with Goff to the Capitol to meet with Mr. Johnson and his team in December and March. They spoke frequently with Mr. Johnson’s staff, including at meetings at the White House and on Capitol Hill.
Meanwhile, White House chief of staff Jeff Zients, Ricchetti and Goff met almost daily with Schumer, Jeffries and their staff to strategize how to advance aid to Ukraine. Mr. Zients, Mr. Ricchetti, Mr. Goff and Mr. Young were also in regular contact with Mr. McConnell, who was eager to advance the effort in the Senate.
The administration is also working closely with the chairs of the bipartisan National Security Committee, including House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Michael Turner, to ensure that House members on Ukraine It also facilitated regular briefings for the public.
In late March, CIA Director Bill Burns held a briefing with the Republican chairmen of the relevant National Security Committees and invited Johnson’s staff to discuss the dire situation in Ukraine.
U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink met with Mr. Johnson, Mr. McConnell, other Republican senators, and House and Senate Republican staffers. Administration officials said the Pentagon held a briefing for House Republicans, and at Mr. Johnson’s request, the administration also held briefings for Representatives Chip Roy of Texas and Ralph Norman of South Carolina. I gave an explanation.
At the White House, Mr. Biden’s senior team met each morning at an oval table in Mr. Zaients’ office to consider how to emphasize the need for more aid. Those meetings included Mr. Zients, Mr. Ricchetti, Mr. Goff, Mr. Young, Senior Advisor Anita Dunn, Mr. Sullivan, and John Finer, the vice president’s national security adviser.
Just after Thanksgiving, the president urged his advisers to make clear that funding was running out and Congress needed to act. Mr. Young, Mr. Sullivan, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met with Congressional leadership to convey that message. Young sent a sharply worded letter to lawmakers warning that the United States would “bring Ukraine to its knees on the battlefield” if funding was not approved.
The White House even approached Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to pitch directly to Johnson at a meeting in Washington, D.C., just before Christmas. However, during his meeting with Zelenskiy at the White House, Mr. Biden also seemed to acknowledge that aid to Ukraine would be difficult, and said that the United States would continue to provide arms and military equipment to the country “to the extent possible.” He said that this was a subtle change from previous assistance to Ukraine. His previous promise to support Ukraine “for as long as necessary.”
After entering the year without a deal, the president invited Mr. Johnson, Mr. McConnell, Mr. Jeffries, Mr. Schumer and the chairman of the National Security Committee to the White House and appealed for aid to Ukraine. . Sullivan and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines outlined specific examples of possible consequences if Ukraine fails to receive additional funding from the United States.
But these conversations further revealed the need for action to address the influx of migrants to the U.S. southern border, which has become too big a political issue for the president and his aides to ignore. Republican and Democratic senators have been working for months on a border security measure that would be combined with aid to Ukraine and Israel. A bipartisan group of senators finally came together in early February to reach an agreement, and the door appeared to be open.
At the urging of former President Donald Trump, the door closed and the deal fell apart. Mr. Biden publicly blamed Congressional Republicans for policy failures.
Senate leadership then moved forward with a bipartisan national security supplement without a border deal soon after, sending the ball back to Johnson’s court in the House.
Mr. Biden invited Mr. Johnson and Congressional leaders back to the White House in late February to discuss efforts to avert a partial government shutdown and increase aid to Ukraine. Burns was on hand to explain how Ukraine has been affected as the war enters its second year, aid bills are stalled and the country grapples with munitions shortages.
The next six weeks saw government officials grow increasingly alarmed as lawmakers continued to receive assessments and briefings on the battlefield situation.However, the Iranian attack on Israel on April 13th The balance of power also changed in the days that followed, as momentum grew to gain support for Israeli construction.
The day after the attack, Mr Johnson suggested he was prepared to support Mr Jeffreys with foreign aid, a move that infuriated Mr Johnson’s right wing and put his future as chairman at risk. The next day, Mr. Biden and Mr. Johnson spoke by phone, and the chairman outlined his plans to move the aid package forward. He told reporters he was pushing ahead with the support vote because of the “serious situation happening around the world.”
Sources have previously heard Mr Burns paint a dire picture of the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine and the global consequences of inaction, with Mr Johnson’s own political future at stake. He told CNN that this was part of his motivation to push ahead with the aid package despite the situation. air.
The House ultimately passed the $95 billion aid package on Saturday, a moment Biden celebrated in separate calls with the Speaker and Jeffries.Ukraine aid package passed with support from 210 Democrats and 101 Republicans
Ahead of final passage, Biden spoke with Zelenskiy on Monday and assured him that aid was on the way after months of waiting.
“We discussed the contents of the next U.S. military aid package,” Zelenskiy said. “The President has assured me that this plan will be approved soon and will be a powerful addition to our nation’s air defense and long-range artillery capabilities.”
