The White House sent a request for a $40 billion supplemental spending package into the Congressional maelstrom yesterday, that includes $24 billion for Ukraine, $13 billion of which is for military aid. President Joe Biden’s emergency aid pitch will almost certainly cause additional angst on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers face a tight timeline to avert a government shutdown by Sept. 30, reported Politico. Politico adds that staunch conservatives in both chambers, but particularly in the House, are vehemently opposed to giving Ukraine another dime without a fuller accounting of how the $43 billion in assistance already allocated to the country has been spent.
“We can’t continue shoveling money out the door to support this conflict with no accountability or transparency,” said Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC), a member of the House Freedom Caucus. “There are no strings attached and no plans to even define what victory looks like. Americans have had enough of Washington running headlong into endless wars.”
The $13.1 billion Pentagon portion of the Ukraine proposal includes $9.5 billion more for the U.S. military to speed up the replenishment of inventories of weapons and equipment sent to the front lines. It also includes $3.6 billion for military, intelligence and other support for Ukraine. Biden is also requesting $8.5 billion for the State Department and its USAID, including $7.3 billion in economic, humanitarian and security assistance for Ukraine and other impacted countries.
However, the White House expects that the $24 billion is only a down payment on what’s to come. “We won’t be bashful about going back to Congress beyond the first quarter of next year if we feel like we need to do that,” a senior administration official told reporters. “It’s really ... the best estimate we can come up with for what we think we’re going to need to support Ukraine, at least for those first three months of the year.”
As for the earlier authorizations, there’s $6.2 billion left in the presidential drawdown authority (the amount from accounting trickery) and another $2.2 billion on contracting authority. That money will likely last until early fall, given current U.S. spending rates, meaning a new package will need to be in place soon to allow Ukraine to plan for operations through the winter, Politico says.
Missing from the request is military support to Taiwan, which some had hoped to use to grease the skids for passage for the package against GOP opposition to the Ukraine aid, though the Senate has already passed a $1 billion for Taiwan in one of its annual spending bills. The Ukraine aid is “definitely a very big point of contention,” a senior House GOP aide told Fox News, yesterday, before the White House announcement. Fox adds that it will be an uphill battle in the House, where Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) promised his narrow majority that he would not bring a supplemental Ukraine funding bill to the floor. The GOP aide predicted that if the overall request reached $40 billion it would be “dead on arrival.”
