War brews in Congress over Ukraine funding
Before the ink was even dry on President Biden and Speaker McCarthy’s debt limit agreement, senators were plotting ways to get around the spending caps by passing “emergency” laws to boost defense spending and war in Ukraine.
Some House Republicans are hesitant to push the nation further into debt to pay for a foreign war.
Defense spending became a central issue for GOP negotiators working with the White House.
Republicans wanted more, President Biden wanted less. They finally settled on Biden’s request for fiscal year 2024 — $886 billion, a three percent increase that Senate hawks said amounted to a cut when inflation is taken into account.
In fiscal year 2025, the limit would be $895 billion — a one percent increase from 2024.
GOP. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, wondered why House Republicans would accept a Biden budget request. He mentioned “anemia,” while Senator Tom Cotton, R-Ark.
Before the ink was even dry on President Biden and Speaker McCarthy’s debt limit agreement, senators were plotting ways to get around the spending caps by passing “emergency” laws to boost defense spending and war in Ukraine. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer walks through the Falls after the Senate passes the BLL
“To my House colleagues — I can’t believe you did this,” Senator Lindsey Graham, RS.C., said Thursday. “Don’t tell me a defense budget $42 billion below inflation fully funds the military.”
“This is where the House and Senate see things differently,” a House GOP aide told DailyMail.com.
Senate Republicans have come up with a solution: If funding for Ukraine’s war is classified as additional emergency funding, they won’t have to count it toward the cap on military spending.
Since the start of the war nearly a year and a half ago, the US has given Ukraine more than $113 to fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“We just passed a bill limiting spending. We know the Democrats didn’t want caps on spending. It’s exactly what we’ve been fighting for and we need to defend the hats,” Rep. Warren Davidson, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, told DailyMail.com in response to the Senate’s pledge to fund more Ukraine.
He cited his letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken demanding that he “define a clear mission” for US involvement in Ukraine.
“There is no appetite on the conservative side of the House to provide additional aid to Ukraine,” an aide to a GOP member of the House who voted for the debt limit deal told DailyMail.com.
Rep. Nancy Mace, who opposed the deal, warned against lawmakers using the “stopgap” — spending more before the final vote.
DC’s little secret: Congress pretends it will cap appropriations, but then waits for an emergency like a hurricane, market stabilization, Ukraine, etc. Using additional emergency bills is how DC gets around caps and why this deal is worse than it sounds. This is DC math,” she wrote on Twitter.
A Ukrainian military helicopter fires during military exercises. Since the start of the war nearly a year and a half ago, the US has given Ukraine more than $113 to fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Additional emergency funding has previously been used for Ukraine, including in a bill the president signed last year. It has also been proposed to strengthen funding for Covid-19, climate and abortion services.
The Senate eventually passed the debt limit deal 63-36, with 31 Republicans and five Democrats voting against. The day before, the House passed it by 314 to 117, with 149 Republicans joining 165 Democrats in passing the bill.
But in a rare step ahead of the final vote on the debt limit, Senate Majority Leaders Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., included a joint statement in the congressional record promising that the deal would cut spending on Ukraine. or other national defense needs.
“This debt ceiling deal does not limit the Senate’s ability to allocate additional emergency funds to ensure that our military capabilities are sufficient to deter China, Russia and our other adversaries,” Schumer said in additional remarks on the Senate floor. , “and responds to ongoing and growing threats to national security, including Russia’s vicious ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine.”
As White House national security spokesman John Kirby put it Friday, “We’ve done an awful lot of work over the past few months to make sure we’ve completed their shopping list and that they have what they need.”
Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the much-needed allies of right-wing Freedom Caucus speaker Kevin McCarthy, voted in favor of the debt limit deal, but are known to oppose further Ukraine aid.
Jordan, who told DailyMail.com on Friday that he does not support additional funding for Ukraine, said in a recent interview with Fox Business, “I am all for helping Ukraine. I just don’t think the American taxpayer should keep giving and giving.”
Subtle tensions have long simmered beneath the surface between House and Senate Republicans.
The lower chamber tends to be more in line with the grassroots Republicanism of a post-Trump world – focused on messaging battles and firing party victories. The Senate, increasingly deliberative and prudent body, in the words of Kevin McCarthy, “doesn’t do much.”
Classic neocon hawks permeate the Senate, while isolationist flares shape the composition of the House. The House has taken the lead in overseeing aid to Ukraine.
A Ukrainian soldier observes an area from a trench near the frontline town of Bakhmut. Additional emergency funding has previously been used for Ukraine, including in a bill the president signed last year. It has also been proposed to strengthen funding for Covid-19, climate and abortion services
Most GOP House members who voted for the Biden-McCarthy deal were silent on the Senate’s promise of additional spending, but it’s far from clear that additional aid for Ukraine would come through the House.
“I think a lot of House members are back in their districts and not paying attention to the Senate promises, but there will be a problem with this,” another GOP aide to a member who voted for the deal told DailyMail .com.
Elise Stefanik, chair of the House GOP conference, told DailyMail.com that the Senate can make any pledge they want to get around, but it’s up to the Republican-led House to take the reins.
‘The Senate eventually voted in favor of the bill, the Fiscal Responsibility Act. The House has set the legislative pace, the policy agenda from start to finish of this Congress, and I see no reason for that to change.”