Speaker Johnson wants to meet with Biden before any action on Ukraine-Israel aid package - media

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, wants to have a face-to-face meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden before proceeding with an additional aid package with funding for Ukraine and Israel, citing a source close to Johnson, NBC reports, UNN writes.

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Johnson and his staff have asked for meetings with Biden several times through senior White House officials over the past two months, following Johnson's trip last month to the U.S. border in Eagle Pass, Texas, the source said.

The most recent request for a meeting came just over a week ago, a few days before the U.S. Senate passed a $95 billion bipartisan national security package and before House Republicans impeached U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.

"Johnson's requests for a meeting were not necessarily about the Senate's version of additional aid, but rather about the overall path forward for the legislative package," the article says.

The Senate bill, which includes aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, was passed with the support of 70 senators.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, said on Tuesday that Biden "refuses" to meet with Johnson.

"In the end, the two of them can come to an agreement that can become law," Scalise said. - "And yet the president refuses to even meet. So the president cannot say that he is serious about Ukraine or the border when he refuses to meet with the speaker so that they can come to an agreement on this issue.

A White House official pointed to what the administration has characterized as Johnson's inconsistency on the border, saying he needs to complete the negotiations he is conducting with himself and stop putting off national security needs in the name of politics.

"This body language says: 'I know I'm in a difficult situation. Please save me,'" said a Democratic Party source associated with the supplemental aid package.

Biden met with Johnson, along with other congressional leaders, less than a month ago to discuss a bipartisan immigration deal that would open up the possibility of aid to Ukraine. Johnson called the meeting "productive" at the time.

Last month, Biden also spoke with Johnson about border security.

Johnson said that any aid package must be accompanied by changes in US border policy. However, Republicans in the Senate this month supported a bipartisan border security bill agreed upon between the parties, which Johnson criticized.

In his statement on Monday, Johnson said that the Senate "should have gone back to the drawing board to amend the current bill to include real border security provisions that would have truly helped end the ongoing disaster. Instead, the Senate's foreign aid bill is silent on the most pressing issue facing our country.

Now that the US Senate has passed a package of aid to Ukraine and Israel that does not include broad changes in border policy, one of Johnson's options, the newspaper writes, "includes bringing the bill to a vote in the House of Representatives, although that scenario seems increasingly unlikely as Republicans voice more skepticism about aid to Ukraine.

Earlier on Tuesday, White House spokesman Andrew Bates issued a memorandum urging the U.S. House of Representatives to pass the U.S. Senate bill.

"Will House Republicans stand with President Biden and senators from both sides of the aisle in supporting America's national security? Or will House Republicans side with Vladimir Putin and the regime in Tehran in the name of politics?" Bates wrote. - The House Republican Party cannot forget this binary choice. It would be devastating to undermine America's national security by voting against our interests and values.

Johnson this month backed a separate bill providing aid to Israel, but the measure did not reach the two-thirds needed for passage under the House's fast-track rule. Many Democrats argued that the law was politicized because Senate negotiators had agreed to a separate package at the time that included aid to Israel, among other measures.