How $6 billion in Ukraine aid collapsed in a government funding bill despite big support in Congress

beijingwalker · Oct 11, 2023

How $6 billion in Ukraine aid collapsed in a government funding bill despite big support in Congress

BY LISA MASCARO
Updated 9:51 PM GMT+8, October 7, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — The collapse of Ukraine aid in Congress was months in the making, and exactly what Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell had feared.
McConnell had warned that political support for Ukraine was in danger as a small but vocal contingent of fellow Republican lawmakers intensified their efforts against sending U.S. money overseas for the fight against Russia.

First in a series of high-profile speeches this summer then in direct overtures to the White House, the Republican leader who had visited Kyiv and put a priority on U.S. support for Ukraine tried to steer the hard-right flank of his party.

But in the end, neither McConnell nor the White House nor Democrats in Congress could muscle a scaled-back $6 billion military and civilian aid package for Ukraine to passage in last week’s deal to avoid a U.S. government shutdown.

Despite overwhelming bipartisan support in Washington for stopping Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, the failure to approve Ukraine aid was a sizable setback for an administration seeking to lead a Western alliance to protect the young democracy as the fighting grinds on.

It also shows the perils ahead in Washington as a hardened band of Republican lawmakers who are just a minority in Congress — many allied with Donald Trump, the party’s 2024 presidential front-runner — flex their power to overcome the will of the majority. The next steps are highly uncertain.

“It does worry me,” President Joe Biden acknowledged last week. “But I know there are a majority of members in the House and Senate — both parties — who have said that they support funding Ukraine.”

Biden said he is preparing to deliver a major speech on U.S. aid to Ukraine and has a plan in the works to ensure the flow of assistance after the upheaval on Capitol Hill, which was punctuated by the ouster of the Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

As Washington regroups, the sudden shift has unleashed political blame over the inability of the White House and Congress to work around the small but intensifying minority of lawmakers who are putting aid in jeopardy.

“Not another penny for Ukraine!” wrote Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Greene, a top Trump ally, arguing money should be spent on securing the U.S. border with Mexico instead.

McConnell, R-Ky., had been trying to build support Ukraine for months, ever since he met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv in May.

The senator gave repeated floor speeches, talked with allies overseas and made the case his priority among colleagues on Capitol Hill, where Zelenskyy received a hero’s welcome last year and visited with a follow-up appeal weeks before the funding showdown.

But after the White House announced Biden’s $24 billion request for Ukraine aid in August, McConnell knew it would not have the support needed to pass, according to a person familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss it.

McConnell had met with a group of Republican defense hawks in the Senate before the end of September deadline to fund the government or risk a shutdown, which would typically be the time to also pass the White House’s spending request for Ukraine.

But the GOP senators left McConnell with the understanding the support for Ukraine funding overall would be lacking.

A week before the deadline, McConnell told Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, on a Friday call that it “would be impossible” for Congress to pass the full $24 billion request, said the person familiar with the situation.

Instead, McConnell encouraged the White House to look “strongly” at whether it could rely on sending Ukraine aid through existing ways for transferring or reprogramming money in the short term, the person said.

The White House, in a series of conversations with McConnell’s team over the weekend, considered smaller amounts of funding and insisted that the Ukraine aid was vital.