The White House continues to slam House Republicans for heading out to a lengthy “vacation” without providing additional funding for Ukraine or addressing the border.
“The damage House Republicans are actively causing to American national security mounts every day that they insist on continuing their two-week vacation,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates wrote in a release first reported by Politico.
President Joe Biden and the White House have been criticizing Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republicans for refusing to take up a $95.3 billion supplemental spending package that was approved by the Senate on a bipartisan basis.
After making remarks Friday about the death of Russian opposition leader Aleksey Navalny, Biden laid into lawmakers about taking an extended Presidents’ Day break and the lack of Ukraine funding. “It's about time they step up — don't you think? — instead of going on a two-week vacation. Two weeks they're walking away. Two weeks. What are they thinking? My God, this is bizarre,” Biden said, adding, “it's just reinforcing all the concern and — and almost, I won't say ‘panic,’ but real concern about the United States being a reliable ally. This is outrageous.”
Bates on Wednesday said Johnson is putting “his own internal politics above the safety of the American people.”
The speaker has been calling for one-on-one negotiations with Biden on the supplemental spending package and border security. He reportedly told Republicans at a private meeting last week that there is “no rush” to address the Ukraine funding issue. he has dismissed the Senate-passed bill for not including border security provisions, though he also helped doom a bipartisan Senate deal that did include such measures. Johnson said that bill fell short of securing the border and insisted that Biden has the authority to enact security measures on his own.
“No amount of memos from the White House can change the fact that House Republicans were clear from the very beginning: any national security supplemental should start at our own border,” Johnson spokesperson Taylor Haulsee told Politico Wednesday.
House lawmakers are due to return to the Capitol on February 28. “The House Republican leadership has been holed up at the luxury waterside Mandarin Oriental in Miami for its annual Elected Leadership Committee retreat,” Punchbowl News noted this morning. “This session followed [a National Republican Congressional Committee] donor event at the Ritz-Carlton in Key Biscayne, Fla., over the weekend.”
