U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson made a major mistake in his first real legislative test after emerging from the divisive process that elected him as leader of the lower chamber after Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted.

President Joe Biden has proposed a legislative package that would provide various forms of aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, in addition to extra funding for border security. In the U.S. Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell are in lockstep on this issue, seeking to pass a single bill collectively addressing all four measures. McConnell recently declared that he "view[ed] it all as interconnected." House Republicans, however, staunchly favor Israel aid, but view the prospect of Ukraine aid far less favorably. 

Johnson's stated goal is to have Israel aid enacted separately. The best likelihood for him to do so: call up a bill providing Israel aid as a standalone with overwhelming bipartisan support, and hope that public opinion is sufficient to convince the Senate to enact it. With that bill then signed into law, he could delay Ukraine aid as long as his Ukraine-skeptical conference wanted.

Johnson, however, has deviated from this strategy in a manner that will imperil the prospects of separating Israel aid and potentially even endanger his fledgling speakership. The bill he proposed, the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, does, as President Biden requested, provide $14.3 billion in aid for Israel. However, in an effort to establish his fiscal conservative bona fides, Johnson made the bill fully paid-for by rescinding the same amount ($14.3 billion) from IRS money that Democrats appropriated last year.

For context, in 2022, Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act through Congress on party-line votes. Part of this package was increased funding to the Internal Revenue Service, which would be used to hire more IRS agents who would reduce tax evasion by the wealthy, thus decreasing the deficit. Therefore, the proposed recission hurt support for Johnson's Israel bill in two ways. For one, the bill would actually increase the deficit: the bill may rescind $14.2 billion from the IRS, but the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the lost funding will lead to lost tax revenue, leaving the bill with a $26.8 billion dollar price tag – a hard pill to swallow for fiscal conservatives. Second, by modifying signature Democratic legislation, Johnson incensed Democrats, who subsequently lined up against the bill. As a result, a bill that could have won hundreds of votes from Democrats received nearly two hundred in opposition. Schumer subsequently declared the bill a "joke" and Biden threatened to veto it. 

Johnson has temporarily united House Republicans (only two voted against the Israel bill), but such unity will not last. The Israel standalone bill will go nowhere in the Senate with the IRS provision attached. By moving the option most palatable to Republicans, Johnson made the bill the point of reference to every future foreign aid proposal. Eventually, he will have to make a deal with Biden, Schumer, and McConnell, and that deal will be much less amenable to his conference. Johnson will need to rely in part on Democratic votes – as McCarthy did to keep the government open – to pass that deal.

And we've already seen how Republicans react when their speaker relies on Democratic votes.