Changing the dynamics of the House Republican conference after the new-labour speaker Mike Johnson’s first day in office: The urgent request for $105 billion aid for Israel and Ukraine

Newly installed Speaker Mike Johnson is confronting a multitude of crises during his first days in office, chief among them a deadline just weeks away to avert a government shutdown and an urgent request from President Biden for a behemoth $105 billion aid bill for Israel and Ukraine.

They are two of the issues that have most bitterly divided the House Republican conference and helped lead to the ouster of his predecessor. Now it falls to Mr. Johnson, a fourth-term congressman who has never served in a top leadership position before, to try to keep his anti-spending party united and the government open — all in a matter of weeks.

The dynamics have changed since Kevin McCarthy was removed from the speaker’s post and the installation of Mr. Johnson. Now leaders are facing yet another shutdown deadline on Nov. 17, and congressional Democrats, White House officials and some leading Republicans are scrambling to salvage Ukraine aid.

The majority of Republicans opposed the stopgap spending bill. He has objected to continued US aid to Ukraine because he thinks it should be stopped because of Russia’s aggression.

As he sought the speakership in recent days, Mr. Johnson has also suggested that he would back a temporary measure to keep government funding flowing through January or April to allow more time to pass all 12 individual annual spending bills, a key demand of the hard right. But he has not said what spending levels he would favor.

The hard-right in the party would probably give Mr. Johnson more latitude on spending than they did Mr. McCarthy because they were so confident in his conservative credentials.

Mr. Norman commented that Mr. Johnson does not begin from the position of way up. “He starts from the position of up and goes down.”

Mr. Norman also wanted to see a temporary spending bill that slashed spending to prepandemic levels, something that could never be passed by the Senate or signed into law by Mr. Biden. Mr. McCarthy and the president agreed in June to suspend the debt ceiling and cap federal spending.

The majority leader, Senator Schumer of New York, said that the funding bills that make cuts way below the bipartisan June agreement will not fly. “If Speaker Johnson tries to send those cuts over here, they’re not going to happen. They’ll be dead on arrival. All they will do is waste more time at a moment when every day counts.”

Mr. Schumer continued: “I told Speaker Johnson the exact same thing I told Speaker McCarthy: In a divided government, the only way we’ll fund the government or pass supplemental is bipartisanship.”

Congress will be testing Mr. Johnson as it considers the Biden administration request for funding for Israel and Ukraine that could be folded into a stopgap measure. The Senate, where the measure is far more popular, is holding a hearing on the aid package next week.

$6 billion for Ukraine was included in a bipartisan Senate stopgap plan to avoid a government shutdown in September. But Mr. McCarthy stripped the aid from his plan, recognizing the sharp decline in Republican support for sending more federal dollars to Kyiv. Democrats swallowed the plan to try and keep the government open because they believed Congress would pass a larger aid package later in the year.

The White House is Not the Answer to the Problem of Israel, Ukraine, and the Border Crisis: Reply to Chairman Mike Johnson in a Media Release

But he added that his backing would not be absolute. “We’re going to have conditions on that,” Mr. Johnson said. “We want accountability and we want objectives that are clear from the White House.”

“For the House GOP under Speaker Mike Johnson this is an obvious HARD NO,” Representative Chip Roy of Texas, an influential anti-spending conservative, wrote on social media. “We will not join Israel and Ukraine, we will not throw money at the border, & all supplementals must be paid for — as a starter. Game on.”

Mr. Johnson said that House Republicans had a consensus about bifurcation of issues like Ukraine and Israel assistance.

“We’re not going to abandon them,” Mr. Johnson added of the Ukrainians, “but we have a responsibility, a stewardship responsibility over the precious treasure of the American people and we have to make sure that the White House is providing the people with some accountability for the dollars.”