McCarthy nixes move to yank Ukraine funding from defense bill

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy changed course on a decision to pull $300 million in Ukraine funding from the defense spending bill, and expects to lose some votes because of it. 

Mr. McCarthy, California Republican, said on Friday that he would pull the funding from the Department of Defense spending bill and put the matter up for a vote separately. 

The move was meant to earn support from conservative holdouts that sank a second procedural vote on the defense legislation earlier in the week. But on Saturday, the speaker said that the plan was not going to work. 

“Some people had concerns about Ukraine,” Mr. McCarthy said. “So I say ‘let’s put it out by itself, then it can go over there.’” Now, that was my idea that we were trying to work through, that’s not solving it.” 

The issue stems from the other bills in the package that GOP lawmakers are putting with the defense spending measure in an attempt to advance at least a few pieces of spending legislation before the Sept. 30 deadline. 

Those other measures include spending bills for defense, the Department of Homeland Security, State and Foreign Operations and the USDA. Lawmakers on the House Rules Committee worked over the weekend to hammer out what Mr. McCarthy called a minibus-style rule for the package of bills.

The main problem was that the State and Foreign Ops bill also had Ukraine funding, which made taking out Ukraine funding in the defense bill “more difficult to do,” Mr. McCarthy said. 

That means that conservative holdouts, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who voted against the measure earlier in the week, will likely do the same when the speaker puts the package of bills on the floor for a procedural vote on Tuesday. 

“I think [Ms. Greene] will vote no on the rule if it’s in there, that’s why I tried to solve it where everybody can be there, but this one it didn’t work out,” Mr. McCarthy said.