President Zelensky’s visit to America’s capital on Tuesday is unlikely to yield any results before the new year, with the House scheduled to recess on Thursday until January 9. Speaker Johnson says the onus is on the Senate to craft a Ukraine aid package with significant money and policy changes to fix the crisis at the southern border. 

Emerging from a Capitol Hill conference room Tuesday, the speaker said that while he had “a good meeting” with Mr. Zelensky, the House would not move any more funding for Ukraine until the Senate comes up with a fair agreement that makes changes to border and asylum policy.

“Our first condition on any national security supplemental spending package is about our own national security first,” Mr. Johnson told reporters. “The border is an absolute catastrophe and this is because of the policies of this White House and this administration. We had 12,000 illegal crossings on one day last week alone.”

House Republicans have placed blame for the situation at the border squarely at Democrats’ feet, saying that the Senate and the White House should have taken up the House’s restrictive immigration reform bill known as H.R. 2. “The Senate has been MIA on this,” the speaker said of the border crisis. “The House passed H.2. six months ago … it’s been sitting, collecting dust on Chuck Schumer’s desk. I have told him personally, I have told the national security advisor, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense that these are our conditions.”

Another concern for Mr. Johnson and his colleagues is the lack of clarity from both the White House and Mr. Zelensky on what a “win” for Ukraine might look like and how they plan to account for American dollars as the war rages on.

“I have asked the White House since the day that I was handed the gavel as speaker for clarity,” the speaker said. “We need a clear articulation of the strategy to allow Ukraine to win, and thus far, their responses have been insufficient. They have not provided us the clarity and the detail we requested over and over.”

“What the Biden administration seems to be asking for is billions of additional dollars with no appropriate oversight, no clear strategy to win, and none of the answers that I think the American people are owed,” he added.

Senators Schumer and McConnell invited the Ukrainian president to speak with senators at the Capitol in the hopes of bolstering support for an aid package among some more reluctant Republicans, but Mr. McConnell made it clear on Tuesday when, according to Punchbowl News, he told his colleagues that the Senate would not act before the end of the calendar year. 

Mr. Schumer says the lack of a border–Ukraine deal will be devastating for the Ukrainian war effort. “President Zelensky urged [Congress] to pass this aid quickly, because if we don’t pass it quickly, it will send a signal to the whole world that we are abandoning Ukraine and could start snowballing — cascading — to Ukraine’s detriment and to our detriment,” he said on the Ssenate floor. “If Ukraine falls, it will be a historic and colossal tragedy.”

In a sign of how desperate lawmakers have become to make a deal before the Thursday recess, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, appeared on Capitol Hill Tuesday to meet with the senate negotiators. Shortly after, CBS News reported that Mr. Mayorkas offered to accept some Title 42-style expulsion methods, detention at the southern border, and more swift deportation of migrants in exchange for Ukraine aid. 

With the deadline looming, Mr. Johnson has faced pressure to keep the chamber in session until the crisis at the border and Ukraine aid are dealt with. 

Mr. Schumer called him on Monday to discuss just that. “Last night, I got on the phone with Speaker Johnson and urged him to keep the House in session” beyond the Thursday recess date, Mr. Schumer said on the floor. “I told him that because over the last 24 hours, I’ve been alarmed to see some of the same Republicans in the House and now a good number in the Senate who had previously demanded action on the border are now suggesting there is no urgency to act before Christmas.”

During an appearance at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council summit on Monday, Mr. Johnson was pressed by a former Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, about why he would let the House go into recess until January without securing a funding package for Ukraine. “Please don’t go out for Christmas without at least giving the Ukrainians what they need,” Mr. Abbott told the speaker. 

“Could we come back?” Mr. Johnson asked. “I would stay here indefinitely, but I don’t know that all of our colleagues will be able to do that.”