Two Lawmakers Hope to Expedite Foreign Aid Bill to House Floor

Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Jared Golden (D-ME) are hoping to get much-needed help to Ukraine and the U.S. southern border by forcing a vote on a bipartisan foreign aid bill within the next week.

The two told CBS News’ Face The Nation they filed the bill for “expedited consideration” so it will make it to the House floor sooner than the 30 days it normally takes.

“Just to be clear, this is to go around the Speaker of the House who has refused to put a bill on the floor?” asked anchor Margaret Brennan.

“It’s just a way, a mechanism to get a bill to the floor,” Fitzpatrick answered, continuing:

And just to be clear about what we’re trying to accomplish here: this is time sensitive, it’s existential. I just got back from Ukraine. Avdiivka fell in the past seven days. We lost Laken Riley in the past seven days. And in the past seven days, 200 families had to bury their kids because of fentanyl. So, what our bill does is, it combines border security with this foreign aid, both existential. And we are forcing this bill to the floor to make sure that everybody acts because as President [Volodymyr] Zelensky said, they have weeks and not months to get reinforcements on the frontlines.

The lawmakers explained that this approximately $49 billion bill is an alternative to the $60 billion foreign

aid bill that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) called “dead on arrival” earlier this month. Former President Donald Trump, considered the de facto head of the Republican Party, feared passage of the bill would hand a victory to President Joe Biden on the border before the 2024 presidential election.

Golden added, “It’s important to point out that the Senate would likely take up something that passes the House with a bipartisan vote.”

Watch the clip via Face the Nation on CBS News.