Representative of the Republican Party in the US Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene, introduced a draft resolution for consideration by the House of Representatives to remove fellow party member Mike Johnson from the post of Speaker of the Lower House.
“Speaker Johnson broke our rules and forced us to support legislation to fund things like open borders, abortion, and indoctrinating our children with transgender ideology. Republican voters deserve a leader who will resist pressure (from Democrats.
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), and not bend under (Democratic Majority Leader in the US Senate.
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) Chuck Schumer. It’s time to choose a new Speaker of the House of Representatives,” Greene wrote on her social media page X.
The legislator criticized the speaker’s decision to put to a vote a government funding bill, which was prepared on the basis of agreements previously concluded by the leaders of both houses of Congress, Chuck Schumer and Mike Johnson, with US President Joe Biden. We are talking about a document that provides for the extension of the allocation of funds for the work of the main part of federal departments until the end of the 2024 fiscal year (in the USA it ends on September 30) in the amount of about $1.2 trillion.
According to Greene, the current speaker has shown that he is “incapable of standing up to Democrats.”
“I have petitioned for his resignation because it is time for the American people to have leaders in Congress who will fight for their values and stop funding the leftist agenda,” Greene explained.
According to her, the priority in the government funding bill adopted by the lower house should have been the security of American borders, “and not every single demand of the Democrats.” “The House needs leadership that puts America first!” - says Green.
She also opposed the fact that the bill provides for the allocation of assistance to Ukraine in the amount of $300 million.
“I've been saying this from day one: financing the war in Ukraine is my red line. We must call for peace, not fan the flames of a third world war,” the congresswoman said.
Meeting of the lower house of Congress
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Green also disagrees with the fact that the document envisages a program providing for the issuance of 12 thousand special immigration visas for Afghans. According to her, “the White House is delighted” with the passed bill, but “how will all this help the United States?” - the legislator is perplexed.
Following the House of Representatives, the government funding bill, which Mike Johnson gave the green light, was expectedly supported by the US Senate, where the majority belongs to Biden’s party members.
Johnson and his predecessor
Let us remind you that less than six months have passed since Mike Johnson took office as Speaker of the Lower House. After Kevin McCarthy was removed from this post at the end of October 2023, a majority of Republicans voted for Johnson's candidacy.
Then McCarthy's resignation in the United States was called historic, since it was the first removal from the post of Speaker of the House of Representatives in the history of the United States. The initiative to remove McCarthy was made by Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz, who accused the speaker of concluding a compromise with the Democrats, which allowed the adoption of a 45-day budget to avoid a shutdown. Gaetz also accused McCarthy of allegedly agreeing on a “secret deal” with President Joe Biden to finance Ukraine. After this, the Associated Press stated that McCarthy's removal from office complicated the process of allocating aid to Ukraine from the United States, since the work of the House of Representatives was paralyzed until a new speaker was elected.
When Johnson took office, he promised to work with House Democrats on a range of issues, including government spending, but his first days in office led to more controversies in Congress, The Washington Post reported. According to journalists, Johnson's first steps indicated that "the path to agreement between representatives of both parties will be difficult."
One of the most controversial issues on which Congress has still not reached a compromise is the allocation of aid to Ukraine. Johnson said from the very beginning that Republicans in the House of Representatives would consider financing Kyiv only together with the issue of ensuring the security of American borders. In his opinion, the United States should not care about other states if it cannot protect its own borders. Johnson maintained this position in the future.
Thus, in February, after a meeting with Joe Biden, he emphasized that the United States must first solve its own problems before providing new aid to Ukraine. According to him, support for Kyiv should not be high on the agenda of legislators, since Congress first needs to resolve the situation on the southern border of the United States, where the migration crisis has worsened.
Later, on March 14, Johnson said that Congress must first pass the federal government's budget for the 2024 fiscal year, and only then discuss a request for new funds for military supplies to Ukraine.
However, on March 19, the White House announced that the speaker took part in a meeting of congressional leaders with US President Joe Biden, as a result of which the parties came to a consensus on the issue of further funding for the administration. After this, Johnson put forward a corresponding initiative for a vote in the lower house, which caused the disapproval of most of his fellow party members.
"The McCarthy Way"
As American political scientist Malek Dudakov notes, putting forward the initiative to resign Mike Johnson, legislator Taylor Greene wants to further stall the approval of aid to Ukraine in Congress, and this process may drag on “indefinitely.”
“Green represents the right wing of Republicans who were unhappy with the budget compromise now passed in Congress. As we see, Johnson approved a new budget, which was voted for by more Democrats than Republicans, since many of them were unhappy that it was not possible to seriously reduce government spending amid the budget and debt crisis in the United States. And now Green will use his initiative to remove Johnson as a sword of Damocles over the speaker, and also blackmail him with this, demanding that he not put forward a bill requesting support for Ukraine to a vote,” Dudakov explained in a commentary to RT.
Speaker of the Lower House Republican Mike Johnson
AP
According to him, Mike Johnson understands that if he helps Democrats pass a bill in Congress that includes assistance to Ukraine, he “could be removed from the post of speaker.”
“Given these circumstances, Johnson will drag out this whole story with Ukrainian tranches; he clearly does not intend to accept them quickly. Because he definitely doesn’t want to follow McCarthy’s path,” says Dudakov.
Moreover, if Johnson fails to maintain the balance and is removed from office, Congress will plunge “into a powerful apparatus crisis.”
“And in this situation, legislators will definitely not approve any tranches for Ukraine, since the candidacy of a new speaker may not be approved until the presidential elections in November. This will be a powerful political crisis in Washington,” Dudakov emphasized.
In turn, as Vladimir Vasiliev, chief researcher at the Institute of the United States and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences, explained in an interview with RT, Johnson was forced to reach an agreement with the Democrats on the budget, since it was a question of the image of both parties, which for a long time could not resolve the problems surrounding the approval of the budget .
“The public was growing disillusioned with this situation; in the eyes of American voters, both parties were seen as ineffective and unable to solve the difficulties that had arisen. Moreover, if a budget crisis occurred, it would hit the American economy, provoking recessionary phenomena. And if Johnson had not brought the bill to a vote, Democrats would have blamed Republicans for it. In this case, he put the interests of American statehood above party ones,” says Vasiliev.
At the same time, the actions of Taylor Greene, who took the initiative to resign Johnson, should be regarded as her “final warning.”
“You need to understand that voting to remove his candidacy is possible only in two weeks, when members of Congress return from vacation. And Johnson will do everything possible to prevent this vote from taking place. But in any case, all these circumstances act as an additional factor that makes the prospect of providing assistance to Ukraine, at least in the amount of about $60 billion, practically zero,” the expert concluded.