14 House Republicans joined with Democrats to reject a $17.6 billion Israel aid bill

Reps. Thomas Massie, Chip Roy, Warren Davidson, and Marjorie Taylor Greene were among the Republicans who voted against the bill.

Bill Clark and Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images; Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The House failed to pass a $17.6 billion bill to provide aid to Israel on Tuesday.14 House Republicans joined with Democrats to vote against it, citing the cost.Speaker Mike Johnson had hoped to use the bill to undermine the bipartisan border bill.

The House of Representatives on Tuesday failed to pass a bill that would have provided billions of dollars in aid to Israel — just moments after it failed to impeach DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

That was driven largely by Democrats, who rejected the bill as an attempt to undermine a broader border security and foreign aid bill that would provide the same amount of aid to Israel. Though the bill garnered a 250-180 majority of votes, it was brought up under suspension of House rules, meaning it required two-thirds support to pass.

Yet among the lawmakers who voted down the $17.6 billion bill were 14 Republicans, most of whom argued that the bill was fiscally irresponsible.

“Israel has a lower debt to GDP ratio than the United States,” Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a long-time opponent of foreign aid, wrote on Twitter as he announced his opposition. “This spending package has no offsets, so it will increase our debt by $14.3 billion plus interest.”

This is the second time the House has voted on an Israel aid bill since the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks.

The first time was in November when the lower chamber passed a bill that paired more than $14 billion in Israel aid with an equivalent cut to funding for the Internal Revenue Service. That was part of an attempt to unlink Israel aid from Ukraine aid, which is far more toxic to Republicans.

But those IRS cuts, which would increase the national deficit if enacted into law, provided a good-enough justification for all but 12 House Democrats to vote against the aid, with Massie and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia being the only two Republicans who voted against it.

In the months since then, House Speaker Mike Johnson has faced criticism for pairing the aid with cuts, with former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy arguing that passing a bill like the one the House attempted to pass on Tuesday would have been more strategic.

“If you ran that, they would have had to sign it — boom,” McCarthy told The Hill.

Yet when Johnson opted to take up that strategy this week, it once again failed — owing to both the fiscal arguments of Republicans who had already voted for a bill that offset the aid, as well as Democrats holding firm on their preference for the aid to be delivered via the broader national security bill.

The House Freedom Caucus, a band of hard-right lawmakers, issued a statement criticizing the new bill while praising the original bill as a “fiscally responsible” way of supporting Israel.

This story will be updated with a list of Republicans who voted against the bill as soon as it becomes available.