Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, trying to simultaneously do the right thing, not trigger former President/current GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, and keep Congressional howler monkey Marjorie Taylor Greene from formally moving to remove him as Speaker (a "motion to vacate"), announced on April 15 his intent to split the Senate foreign aid package into four separate bills.
Johnson proposes a bill for aid to Israel and is silent about whether that will include humanitarian aid for Gaza. A separate bill would provide aid to Ukraine. The remaining two bills would be for aid to Taiwan and a bill comprised of several measures, including seizure of Russian assets and banning TikTok. Border security measures could be added to this last mop-up bill.
There are many obstacles to this legislative package. First is time. Johnson says he will honor the 72-hour rule allowing introduced legislation to be read before going for a vote. The earliest legislation could be drafted is the 16th. Problem is, Congress is supposed to recess on the 18th for a week.
(Until the 15th the agenda was tied up with Appliance Week…where such gripping legislation as the Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act, Liberty in Laundry Act, Clothes Dryers Reliability Act, Refrigerator Freedom Act, Affordable Air Conditioning Act, and Stop Unaffordable Dishwasher Standards Act stood ready for action. I am not making this up. There was so much ridicule over Appliance Week that the caucus hastily scrapped the plan.)
Then, there is the howler monkey caucus on the right and progressives on the left. The former group bizarrely doesn't want aid for Ukraine. The latter group doesn't want aid for Israel. Meanwhile, House Democrats are collecting signatures on a discharge petition that would trigger a floor vote without leadership approval on the original Senate bill where all the aid is combined. As of this writing, it has 195 signatures, one of them Republican.
And the rest of the world watches. In Southwest Asia, where Iran launched a massive but largely failed missile and drone strike on Israel, regional powers are being forced to choose sides. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates shared intelligence with Israel and its allies, including the U.S., that assisted with the hugely successful defensive response that resulted in most of the incoming strike being destroyed in air. Yet the Saudis and Emiratis denied the U.S. and Israel the use of their airspace to intercept missiles and drones.
The Gaza war has thrown the entire region into turmoil; this is complicated by a perception among the Gulf states that the U.S. has forsaken many of its previous defense guarantees over the past decade. This makes those nations more hesitant to openly support U.S. interests and slows progress in improvement of relationships with Israel. Both of these developments are beneficial to Iran.
Last year, China brokered a deal to re-establish relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran. It's the Saudis who are offering investments in Iran to deter wider involvement in the Gaza war. When the U.S. had a preeminent role in the defense of the Gulf states, Iran remained an isolated rogue state with little influence. Now China has a seat at the table and is cutting deals. This is not beneficial to U.S. interests and it imperils Israel.
The lack of resolve of the last three administrations with regard to Iran has eroded our influence in Southwest Asia and our over-cautious response to the Iran-backed Houthi attacks in the Red Sea haven't helped. There should be no reason why the U.S. cannot wipe the Houthis off the map. The Gulf States know this. The fact that the Houthis still have the capacity to threaten commerce may well indicate that Iran is becoming as strong a superpower in the region as the U.S. The Gulf States cannot ignore this.
Iran's missile and drone attack on Israel involved Russian weapons. Russia remains a threat to global security outside Eastern Europe. Yet the U.S. fails month after month to pass a meaningful aid package to halt Russian advances in Ukraine.
Sadly, this also-ran status in Southwest Asia is one our country will have to become accustomed to for the next few years. Former UN Ambassador and National Security Advisory John Bolton slammed both Trump and Biden on the Sunday talk shows immediately following the Iranian attack.
"He doesn't have any idea what to do in the Middle East in this situation," Bolton said of Trump, who had suggested that the attack wouldn't have happened if he were President. "He's delusional."
He doesn't pull any punches for Biden either. "Sadly, Iran isn't worried about the United States. They don't see Biden as having the spine to cross Iran's red line of not attacking Israel directly. To the extent that Biden and others urge no retaliation, which I think was shameful, it appears the Israelis are going to reject that. The only question is how strong it's going to be," Bolton posted on X.
I don't always agree with Bolton, who I think would support paving Tehran at this point, but he speaks to the frightening truth of the 2024 election. "This is a measure of two candidates, neither one of whom is qualified at a point of enormous threat, not just to Israel's national security — let's be clear, what's happening in the Middle East is a threat to American national security."
I never expected to live in a world where shooting wars involving Russia and Iran would be happening at the same time, with China negotiating back door deals along the way. I really never expected to live in an America where our Congress could not get out of its own way long enough to act on any of this.
Merritt Hamilton Allen is a PR executive and former Navy officer. She appeared regularly as a panelist on NM PBS and is a frequent guest on News Radio KKOB. A Republican, she lives amicably with her Democratic husband north of I-40 where they run one head of dog, and two of cat. She can be reached at
