House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) commended Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for successfully shepherding the expansive foreign aid package through the House over the weekend.
McCaul, a staunch advocate for increased aid to Ukraine, expressed his backing for Johnson following the House’s approval of the foreign aid package on Saturday. Despite facing resistance from some conservative members within his party for facilitating a vote on additional aid to Ukraine, Johnson has earned McCaul’s support.
Michael McCaul (Credits: CBS News)
“He’s got my support…the stock in Mike Johnson’s gone way up. I think the respect for him has gone way up because he did the right thing, irrespective of his job. That garnered a lot of respect. And also from the Democrat side,” McCaul remarked on ABC’s “This Week.”
McCaul highlighted Johnson’s transformation in passing the passage of the foreign aid package onto the House floor. The package, aimed at providing additional aid to Ukraine, Israel, and U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific region, had been stalled in the House for months due to opposition from GOP members.
“I think he tried to do what the, you know, say the Freedom Caucus wanted him to do. It wasn’t going to work in the Senate or the White House. At the end of the day, we were running out of time. Ukraine’s getting ready to fall,” McCaul explained.
Rep. Michael McCaul (Credits: The Hill)
“I think the briefings that he got in the classified space, the advice he got from people like me and [Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio)], House Intelligence, Armed Services, I think talking to world leaders, he became the man that went from a district in Louisiana to the Speaker of the United States, to also someone who had to look at the entire world and had to carry the burden of that and make the right decision,” he added.
The foreign aid package, now awaiting approval in the Senate, allocates approximately $61 billion for Ukraine, $26 billion for Israel, humanitarian aid in Gaza and elsewhere, and $8 billion for Taiwan and other U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific.
