President Biden will meet with congressional leaders, war in Ukraine in the background
U.S. President Joe Biden will meet with four political leaders in Congress on Tuesday to specifically discuss providing aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, the White House announced Sunday.
7:36 AM EST, February 26, 2024
Summit meeting on Tuesday
The meeting is scheduled for Tuesday. It will be attended by Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader Democrat Chuck Schumer, Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
At the meeting, Biden intends to stress "the urgency of passing a cross-party national security bill and the need to pass a bill to fund the government before midnight on Friday."
Schumer said in a statement on Sunday that there was still no agreement on funding the government, and called on House Speaker Mike Johnson to "become more active" and reach a cross-party compromise, despite opposition from his party's most conservative congressmen.
Experts stress that the fate of the Kyiv aid bill now depends precisely on the House speaker, who has been held hostage by congressmen who are Trump supporters; Johnson's attitude was not even changed by the death in the gulag of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Struggling in the House of Representatives
The White House has been trying to convince the Republican Party-controlled House of Representatives to approve a $95.3 billion aid package to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. However, the House Speaker conveyed several days ago that he does not intend to allow a vote on the proposal in the near future.
According to the Associated Press, Johnson is blocking the vote because congressmen from the far-right wing of the Republican Party have an 'increasingly ambivalent' approach.
Source: NBC News
