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The White House is planning to ask Congress to authorize more
Originally published in AntiWar
The last massive aid package Congress authorized for Ukraine has about $6 billion left, which is expected to be used up by mid-summer, POLITICO reported Monday.
So far, the US has authorized about $113 billion in spending on the war in Ukraine, which includes military aid, direct budgetary aid, training, funding for US troop deployments in Eastern Europe, and other types of assistance.
Once the final $6 billion dries up, the Pentagon won’t be able to ship more weapons to Ukraine. That means the White House is expected to ask Congress to authorize more spending on the war soon.
A senior Biden administration official told POLITICO that the White House is discussing a new package and is going to time it so the weapons can keep flowing to Ukraine. The official said the administration is “fully committed” to supporting Kyiv in the war “for the long haul.”
The POLITICO report said that massive aid packages for Ukraine might not be as easy to ram through Congress as they were before, citing the debate over the debt ceiling and dissent from a small but significant group of Republicans. But the majority of Republicans support arming Ukraine, including GOP leadership, who have been critical of President Biden for not sending longer-range weapons and fighter jets.
“Although there are dissenting voices, the large majority of certainly Republicans — for sure in the Senate and arguably in the House as well — believe strongly that we need Ukraine to win and that the outcome there is something that matters not only to that region, but to the United States and our national security interests,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
On the Democrat side, there is virtually no opposition to arming Ukraine. While there’s still strong support in Congress for arming Ukraine, hawks in Washington are concerned it could decline if Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive fails.
