This question has sent shocks through some after Senate Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy suggested this week that a Republican majority might end Ukraine’s “blank check” from the United States. At a stop in Pittsburgh on Oct. 20, President Biden sounded like a Joe McCarthy clone, in berating the Republican opposition. “These guys don’t get it. It’s a lot bigger than Ukraine. It’s Eastern Europe. It’s NATO. It’s really serious, serious consequential outcomes. They have no sense of American foreign policy.” From the Republican side of the war party, Mike Pence was trotted out to chastise those obstinate members refusing to commit to endless war, telling a Heritage Foundation event on Oct. 19, that “there can be no room in the conservative movement for apologists to Putin. There is only room in this movement for champions of freedom.”
“Bipartisan” plans are now being floated that if the Republicans win back control of the House in November, a mega-Ukraine aid bill will be introduced in the lame-duck session of Congress to secure funding for Ukraine’s war before the new Congress takes office in January. One Republican senator told NBC that the new amount would make the most recent allocation of $12 billion “look like pocket change.” It is expected that this number will be around $50 billion, bringing the total U.S. support for Ukraine this year to $115 billion!
