CV NEWS FEED // A new poll shows that just under half of likely voters – including two-thirds of Republicans polled– oppose a provision of a proposed House foreign aid package that would allocate $60 billion in wartime aid to Ukraine.
The Daily Signal executive editor Rob Bluey reported Thursday that House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA, “is slated to bring five bills to the floor for votes Saturday.”
“Four of the bills would be combined later into a single package, pending a House rule [then under consideration],” Bluey added. This rule passed Friday with mostly Democratic support.
However, a J.L. Partners poll conducted last week shows that 47% of likely voters oppose the package’s provision to loan tens of billions to the Eastern European nation. This includes 32% who “strongly oppose” it and 15% who “somewhat oppose” it.
Just one third (33%) of the poll’s respondents stated that they supported $60 billion in Ukraine aid – 16% “strongly support” it and 17% “somewhat support” it. The remaining 1 in 5 voters did not support nor oppose the proposal.
Among Republican voters polled, a vast majority of 66% strongly opposed the Ukraine provision. When this percentage is broken down, 49% of Republicans strongly opposed the $60 billion loan, while 17% somewhat opposed it.
Per the poll, only 17% of Republicans supported the Ukraine aid proposal being brought forward in the Republican-controlled house. Eleven percent of Republicans somewhat support it – and only 6% indicated they strongly support it.
Bluey noted that according to the same J.L. Partners poll, every demographic group surveyed, except for Democrats, Biden supporters, and voters over the age of 65, opposed sending $60 billion to Ukraine.
A plurality of men, women, college graduates, college nongraduates, white voters, black voters, Hispanic voters, and all age cohorts under 65 opposed the Ukraine loan, per the poll.
After Republicans and Trump supporters, black voters were the group most opposed to Ukraine aid. Black voters opposed the provision thirty percentage points more than those who supported it.
Independent voters opposed the loan fifteen percentage points more than those who supported it.
On Friday, Bluey reported that Speaker Johnson “lost more than 25% of his Republican conference .. on [the] procedural vote to advance,” the package of four foreign aid bills including the proposed $60 billion Ukraine law.
“The measure passed, 316-94, thanks to the support of Democrats, who typically oppose the majority party’s rules,” Bluey noted.
He clarified that Johnson “won the backing of 165 Democrats compared to 151 Republicans” with “39 Democrats and 55 Republicans vot[ing] against the procedural rule.”
Notably, one of the dozens of Republicans who voted against the rule to advance the package was Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-IN, who is herself a Ukrainian immigrant.
“I voted NO,” Spartz wrote in an X (formerly Twitter) post Friday afternoon explaining her decision.
“This rule violated the agreement we had to include the #1 national security issue – border security,” the congresswoman added.
“The House is failing the American people by not holding the line on the border,” she emphasized.
Back in December, Johnson stated that he would not support anymore wartime aid going to Ukraine until “significant action is taken to secure the United States’ border with Mexico,” CatholicVote indicated at the time.
“I’ve made this very clear,” the speaker told reporters in December. “From the very beginning when I was handed the gavel, we need clarity on what we’re doing in Ukraine and how we’ll have proper oversight of the spending of precious taxpayer dollars of the American citizens.”
“And we need transformative change at the [southern] border,” he said.
>> DECEMBER: JOHNSON SAYS NO UKRAINE AID UNTIL BORDER IS SECURE <<
