The bill has passed. Thank you. Host it is the washington journal for sunday, april 21. Yesterday, the house passed a series of foreign aid funding bills, including 60 billion for ukraine and 20 million for israel as republicans pushback on some of the pending. We want to know what you think about the bills. Here are the lines. Republicans, 202 7488001. Democrats, 202 7488000. Independents, 202 7488002. If you would like to send us a text, you can do so at 202 7488003. Make sure to include your name and city. You can post on facebook at facebook. Com cspan. And you can also post on x, cspanwj. We will get to your calls in just a few minutes, but first to tell us more about those bills and yesterdays vote is congressional reporter stephen neukam. Welcome. Guest good morning. Host what stood out to you about yesterdays vote, especially the more contentious votes on ukraine and israel . Guest yeah, i think the number one thing that stands out about the vote yesterday was when the ukraine a vote speaker johnson got less than half of his conference to vote with him. Less than half of republicans voted to pass that legislation. There were many that were upset about the process behind it, the fact that even got to the floor, and yes, it still passed relatively easily with a healthy number of republicans and democrats voting for the bill, but politically and internally within the party for johnson, the fact that he got less than half of his conference is a big issue. Host what was the mood post vote with that kind of voting . Guest obviously some frustration about the fact that again it passed with more democratic support than republican support, but i think overwhelmingly and the reality is that on capitol hill, there is an overwhelming consensus that the u. S. Needs to back not only ukraine but israel, taiwan, and other international partners. There may be a little bit of a fight over it in the senate, but it will pass the other chamber so i think overwhelmingly the sentiment was feeling that the house had just accomplished something it needed to accomplish and something pretty historic. Host remind our audience why speaker johnson had to break this down into four separate bills. Guest yeah, so it is essentially the same topline number. The bills all put together, the same topline number as a package that passed the senate a few weeks back or over a month ago now, which was 90 billion plus. Johnson separated out these bills to allow his members to have an open amendment process and be able to vote on amendments on the floor, sort of a way to appease conservatives who were not happy with the legislation coming forward in the first place. The reality is that really none of those amendments were ever going to be attached to the bills. But it was sort of a process that speaker johnson had to go through politically. Host and what happens now . What is the senate going to do on their end . Guest they will try to get this thing done as quickly as possible. The way the senate works as a little different from the house. It takes more time. They will have to come to a time agreement between all 100 senators to limit debate on the bill. There will be negotiations over that. If they cannot reach an agreement, it is likely the bill can get past the Senate Tuesday i think at the earliest, but they will work to come to a time agreement, and it is possible they get that done as early as tomorrow. Host you had some recent reporting that talks about speaker johnsons future. There were a lot of debates and some republicans who were not happy with him moving forward especially with ukraine bill and the potential motion to vacate. Where do things stand now . Guest i think there is more support than there is starting to be more public support coming forward for the motion to vacate pushed by Marjorie Taylor greene and Thomas Massie and some others who have now said they would support a motion to vacate, but the dynamics here are way different than when a Speaker Mccarthy lost his job. We already have democrats publicly saying they would vote to save speaker johnson. Marjorie Taylor Greene said after the vote yesterday she was going to let her colleagues go home and hear from their constituents because they are on recess, but the expectation is that will be acted upon once lawmakers are back in d. C. , not this week but the week after. Host going into the votes this weekend, last week, some House Democrats had attempted to restrict u. S. Weapon sales and military aid to israel as part of the foreign aid package. What happened with that . Guest yeah, well, i think if you just take a step back and look at the coalition of folks who voted against the israel bill, there were a number of conservatives but also partnering with a number of progresses who voted to not pass that aid. It is an interesting coalition of lawmakers on sort of both fringes of each party. Progressives who are upset with the white house and the israeli governments treatment of gazans and palestinians and also republicans who are upset with mike johnson who want no more international aid. Host all right, stephen neukam, congressional reporter, we really appreciate your time this morning. Thank you so much. Guest yeah, thanks. Host and we will get to your calls. People are already starting to dial in. We will go first to ross in battle creek, michigan, on the democrat line. Ralph. Caller yes, i was going to say it looks like the republicans are split on this and there is a prorussia, proauthoritarian, prodictator, proputin wing of the party, the dangerous Republican Party, which is authoritarian, antidemocratic, antiukraine, antinato. I think this is good news in the sense that ukraine will not fall to the russians. We wont have a collapse of a country in Eastern Europe. There will not be thousands and thousands if not millions of refugees in Eastern Europe if russia takes control of ukraine. I cant imagine the ramifications of russia advancing and consolidating their control of ukraine. There will be i am thinking probably millions of refugees leaving ukraine. Nato would be in trouble. There would be instability in Eastern Europe. The consequences are very bad. Did you get all that . Host i did. Thank you, ralph. We will go to billy in alexandria, indiana, calling on the independent line. Billy . Caller yes. I am really not too much for this bill. We dont know where the money is going. They need to be held accountable for all the money. This president over there in ukraine, i dont know about israel, but i know ukraine. He spent a whole lot of money over there buying yachts and buying land. He bought a big place in florida. We just dont know where the money is going. And nobody seems to want to nobody seems to care to be held accountable for already the billions of dollars that we have sent over there. I can see sending weapons over there, but as far as just giving them a blank check on our money, i just cant see it, you know . Host ok, billy was talking about the ukraine aid bill. Here are some of the details of what was in it. It was 60. 8 billion. It converts all Financial Assistance to ukraines government into a loan. It requires the administration to submit to congress wi5 days a strategy establishing specific and achievable objectives with metrics that define and prioru. S. National security interests. It is 13 billion dollars to replenish American Defense stkpiles. 7 billion for current u. S. Military operations in the region. 13. 9 billion dollarfor procurement of advanced weapon systems. And 13. 7 billion for purchasing u. S. Defense systems for ukraine. We will going out to brian in salt lake city, utah, calling on the republican line. Brian. Caller hey, you hear me . Host yes, brian. Caller no money to ukraine. They are the most corrupt ever. Six days Barack Obama Says we are six days from fundamentally transforming america. This is what is going on. This is our third woman president. Woodrow wilson, his wife was president. Fdr, his wife was president. And valerie jarrett, she is running the show. And susan rice. Because biden is just not there. Host ok, we will go to melvin in arkansas on the democrat line. Melvin. Caller yes, good morning. Host good morning. Caller my complaint is the republicans are trying to get rid of mike johnson because he is trying to do his job because the American People need our allies because we are surviving on that land. We are keeping our military on their property. I dont feel like donald trump replaced in this party to be supplying ukraine and other allies with what their needs are. Host ok. We will go to juliet in massachusetts on the independent line. Juliet. Caller yes, good morning. Host good morning. Caller welcome, cspan. I have been watching for 25 years. You have one of the best jobs in the world, i must say. For the purpose of my remarks, you know, this war in ukraine is tantamount to a world war i style of trench warfare. So is this going to go on in perpetuity . Are we funding this forever . Will this be a forever more . Forever war . Beyond that, the money that was allotted, 60 billion plus, a lot of it is allotted for ukraine but only 23 billion is actually going to ukraine to basically fund their government, the pensions, to run the operation. Like washington, how do you run it . Taxpayer money. Our taxpayer money. Aside from that, the rest of the money stays in the u. S. And goes to the militaryindustrial complex, which is basically manufacturing world war slam arms like guns and tanks, which it seems to be a never ending game. I dont know what is to become of ukraine. I think putin has no ambition of actually going into mulled although he is in moldova. There is a section that is russian land. There is also one area nestled right on the baltic sea. We are already in those lands if you will. It is a little bit may be overzealous of the rhetoric emanating from washington that putin wants to invade all of ukraine and into the baltic region and beyond. Host do you think the house was right in passing the bills yesterday . Caller that is an excellent question. I think speaker johnson i give him a lot of credit because he is a former head of Judiciary Committee in congress. He got my attention years ago because he is a staunch conservative, a constitutional scholar, and it was against his ethers to do this. When he went into the private realms of the security about warfare, he was convinced that this is really not just to try to prop up ukraine, but there is more because we have a new axis of evil. We have russia, china, and iran. It is interesting. Right now, we americans are pulling out of niger in africa because china is coming in. It is no longer monetarily viable for us to be there and this is going on all over africa. I am sure you read about it but i want to thank you for taking my call today. I just hope we can find an engine for a resolution. We have an election pending and elections have consequences. Host thank you, juliet. From the Washington Post today, the article is talking about the ukraine funding bill. It says ukraine funds come at a key juncture for the country and its war with russia as the pentagon warns that ukraine would steadily ced more grant to russiaen forces and faced agricasualties without more funding. It is a win for speaker johnson. He increasingly leads the coalition of more mainstream House Republicans and democrats in highpriority legislation passage. It goes onto say johnson, who evolved on the issue of ukraine, was defiant in his decision to move ahead on funding on the major ally in a bipartisan manner even though there were critics of the legislation. Speaker johnson spoke with reporters yesterday after the house votes. Here is some of what he had to say. [video clip] as i said many times, i dont walk around this building worried about a motion to vacate. We have i have to do my job. We did. You do the right thing and you let the chips fall where they may. A brave step at the same time, it took too long for aid to ukraine. Why did you decide to do it right now . Listen, the house had a lot of work to do here. We had to get the government funded in our appropriations process and had to authorize the foreign Intelligence Surveillance act. We had a lot of important measures that had to be done and we got to this as quickly as could be. This is an important matter. It is timely. You heard from leaders around the world including ukraine this is being done on a timely basis, and the house had to have the time to deliberate and do this in the right manner. I think we did our work here, and i think history will judge it well. Host we will go to mike in st. Louis, missouri, calling on the republican line. Mike. Caller hey, good morning. How are you doing today . Host doing good, thanks. Caller i am all for the aid packages to be passed. I think the United States needs to let israel, the Israeli Military do what they need to do over there in the gaza strip. I think they need to employ the same strategy we employed in Operation Inherent resolve against isis as far as just go in there and read them all out. Got to do that because they are embedded in the population and it is troubling. Number two is donald trump. The rhetoric he spews out of his mouth worries me sometimes, especially when he says i would let putin do what he wants to do. That is very troubling, very, very troubling. That is all i have to say. Thank you. Host we will go to brenda in georgia on the democrat line. Brenda. Caller good morning and thank you for being there. I have a problem with not if they dont fund ukraine. We promised in 1994 when they gave up all the weapons on the border that we would protect them, and we have so far, but we have all of these republicans who dont want to. Our word was given. Not only that, if russia continues to sweep across, which he will because he is nuts, than american blood will be spilled over there. When it happens, it will be on the Republican Party for not doing what this country promised. Host we will go next to decatur, georgia, calling on the dependent line. Garth. Caller yes, we are funding all of these countries and we have 82,000 homeless americans in new york city alone. That is the problem i have. Tax day just passed, and they hurried up and cast a spending bill for war. War in ukraine, israel, gaza, and they are talking about a war in taiwan with china. To quote one of the greatest marines in the history of the United States, general butler, he said war is a racket. General eisenhower, president , he said overspending on the military is like hanging all of humanity on a cross of fire. The United States has been in 75 wars in 247 years. We should think about that. Where are our tax dollars going . Tax day just passed and they could not help but spend it. I dont mind helping Homeless People, but on ukraine, taiwan, and israel, those are welfare states. Republicans are always talk about people on welfare. Thank you. Host our previous caller brenda brought up opposition to the aid funding, and yesterday on the house floor before the vote, republicans spoke out in opposition to that legislation. Here is some of his remarks. [video clip] mr. Chairman come i rise in opposition to the act, and i will make a glaring point. This war is not economically speaking even a fair fight. The Gross Domestic Product of the European Union is nine times that of russia. Their population is three times that of russias. The European Union can do more. If the United States continues to fund this effort, the eu will not muster the political will to do what they should. Yes, russia is a strategic adversary of america, but it is a bigger threat to our european allies. Nato nations now, many are not doing the required 2 of gdp on defense. Europe must act with greater urgency. We heard a lot about churchill and chamberlain. If i may point out, they are both british. If Great Britain and europe as a whole had done more with austria, history might be different. The gentlemans time has expired. Host we will go to art in pennsylvania calling on the republican line. Art. Caller i am just talking about that a package. I do think that ever should have went through. I really dont. I dont think it should have went through. Host for any of the eight packages or for a specific, ukraine or israel . Caller the one they just passed. They are doing these things for other countries. What about our own country . Look at our border. It is a mess. And they are worried about their borders . It is ridiculous. They keep passing these bills like the republicans and democrats. I think they are getting kickbacks from that. They better check your overseas accounts because i dont trust any of them. Host ok, we will go to mary in philadelphia calling on the democratic line. Mary. Caller yes, good morning, cspan. I agree with the last gentleman that called. We should not be providing aid, foreign aid to all of these countries with no oversight. I worked for the government for 45 years. And i saw it firsthand. We have no one in place to verify exactly what they are doing with this money, and that is with all aid packages, even domestic aid. We need to make sure that we hold these people accountable based on the system that we have in place. Now we are looking at israel. Israel was listed as the richest country in that region with no oil, and that was based on the International Stock exchange. We have been funding israel for i would say over 45 years, maybe even longer than that. And for a two state solution, which they had no agreement in place to do anything about a two state solution. Ukraine, based on when someone was the president of ukraine, he was listed on the Panama Papers where they had siphoned money off. You know, until we have strict oversight over these countries and even over our domestic spending, we need to make sure that we hold people accountable and we do have the system in place because it is entered on our system based on Ronald Reagan integrating everythi