Sweeping Russia sanctions legislation championed by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham cleared a procedural hurdle in the House on Monday, likely teeing up a full House vote later in the week.
The House Rules Committee voted to advance the measure, following a heated exchange between lawmakers over a provision that would give the White House more tariff authority.
“Today we have an opportunity to help end the war in Europe and project peace through strength around the globe,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said during the hearing, arguing that “failure to act” on the bill would empower Moscow and encourage other adversaries like North Korea and Iran to further their aggressive actions as well.
But the legislation isn’t out of the woods yet. House GOP leaders could still face procedural obstacles on the floor during the party-line vote that sets the time for debate. House Speaker Mike Johnson can only afford to lose a handful of Republican votes or risk having the measure caught up in a procedural snag.
There’s also a time constraint: If lawmakers don’t vote on the legislation this week, it’ll get punted until after the midterms as the House is set to leave town again next week to campaign for reelection in their home districts.
Johnson suggested to reporters Monday that he could avoid that procedural mess entirely by moving the bill under a fast-track process that would require a bipartisan two-thirds majority for passage.
“I believe we’ll have the votes,” Johnson said, adding that if the procedural rule vote fails, he would shift to the expedited method, known as suspension of the rules.
Although the sanctions legislation, which has White House backing, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in the Senate in August, its progress slowed after summer recess amid flagging Republican enthusiasm and growing Democratic opposition. Many Democrats have argued against the bill, saying it would hand too much tariff authority to a White House already liberally applying tariffs against both friends and foes alike.
In addition to mandatory sanctions for Russia’s leadership and energy sector — as well as collaborators in Moscow’s defense industry and so-called shadow fleet — the bill would hand President Donald Trump the power to hit top buyers of Russian oil with 100 percent tariffs.
New York Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the measure would get “overwhelming Democratic support” if the secondary tariffs were excised.
Meeks offered multiple amendments to the legislation, including a move to strike the tariff language, one to clarify that the EU is not a “country” for the purpose of the secondary tariffs and one to change the broad waiver language in the bill so that sanctions can only be waived if doing so was “vital to the national security of the United States.”
“It is deeply flawed, despite what its title says,” Meeks said of the bill. “It’s unlikely to result in any new sanctions on Russia. It will, however, hand the president of the United States sweeping new tariff authorities that he can abuse to raise the cost on the American people.”
The legislation is only headed to the House floor because Trump told Johnson he wanted the broad tariff authorities “immediately,” Meeks said, reiterating comments he told POLITICO last week.
Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who cosponsored the House version of the bill, said that he supported all of Meeks’ amendments — except for stripping the tariff language.
Instead, Hoyer offered an amendment that would identify the 10 countries that would be affected by tariffs: China, India, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Hungary, Slovakia, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
While the White House isn’t a fan of the amendment, Trump won’t veto the bill, Hoyer said.
“If we do not pass this bill, there will be great joy in the Kremlin and great devastation in Kyiv,” Hoyer said.
The committee ultimately rejected both Meeks’ and Hoyer’s amendments.
Despite Democratic opposition over the tariff provisions, the top Democrat on the committee Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said he thought the bill would pass “no matter what.”
Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.
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