A group of GOP lawmakers is opposing additional aid for Ukraine’s defense as the president of the war-torn country arrives in the U.S. to plead for more American support.
The coalition of 29 Republicans, which includes six senators and 23 House members, sent a letter to the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Thursday taking the administration to task for providing more than $114 billion in aid to Ukraine since Russia invaded, without ensuring proper guardrails to prevent waste and fraud.
“The vast majority of Congress remains unaware of how much the United States has spent to date in total on this conflict, information which is necessary for Congress to prudently exercise its appropriations power,” the group wrote. “It is difficult to envision a benign explanation for this lack of clarity.”
The letter, sent in response to President Biden’s request for an additional $24 billion in aid, goes on to call the administration’s open-ended commitment to Ukrainian defense “absurd” and demands greater transparency around the state of the conflict and Ukraine’s prospects for reclaiming territory.
The American people deserve to know what their money has gone to. How is the counteroffensive going? Are the Ukrainians any closer to victory than they were 6 months ago? What is our strategy, and what is the president's exit plan? What does the administration define as victory in Ukraine? What assistance has the United States provided Ukraine under Title 10? It would be an absurd abdication of congressional responsibility to grant this request without knowing the answers to these questions. For these reasons—and certainly until we receive answers to the questions above and others forthcoming—we oppose the additional expenditure for war in Ukraine included in your request.
The letter noted a recent $6.2 billion accounting error on Ukraine Presidential Drawdown Authorities (PDA) by the Department of Defense. The error stemmed from the Pentagon overestimating funding for ammunition, missiles, and other equipment it sent to Ukraine, Reuters reported.
Biden, the legislators said, has been trying to work around Congressional oversight by seeking another $5 billion for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, when House and Senate bills authorized $300 million for the program in fiscal year 2024.
“Disjuncture between authorization and appropriation figures of this magnitude makes a mockery of the NDAA's authorization process, which has occurred for 62 years consecutively,” the letter said.
In total, Biden is demanding another $24 billion in security, economic, and humanitarian assistance for the war in Ukraine.
Senator Vance has been leading the charge to demand an “accounting” of aid to Ukraine, spearheading a different letter in January that asked the OMB to detail more meticulously U.S. government-wide expenditures for Ukraine as well as countries affected by the conflict.
The omnibus spending bill from last December “brought the total budget authority provided by Congress to support a range of activities in Ukraine and ‘in countries impacted by the situation in Ukraine’ to $114 billion,” the letter said. But the amount excluded parts such as reprogrammings and transfers, it noted.
Zelensky is supposed to meet with Biden at the White House as well as lawmakers from both parties on Capitol Hill on Thursday, when he will likely petition for more aid for Ukraine. While the dissenting Republicans in both chambers may not be sufficient in number to prevent more Ukraine aid from passing, they could delay expediting a spending bill.
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