Joe Biden asks Congress for additional $10 billion for Ukraine

The Biden administration decided to ask Congress for additional funding of at least $25 billion, including for defense spending, including aid to Ukraine. This was reported on August 10 by Bloomberg and Politico, citing sources. Thus, $13 billion out of $25 billion is planned to be directed to defense, including assistance to Ukraine, and $12 billion to eliminate the consequences of natural disasters. On August 8, the Punchbowl News portal wrote that Biden would ask Congress for additional support for Ukraine in excess of $10 billion. Earlier, Vedomosti reported that Biden plans to ask for funding from these funds for the purchase of weapons for Taiwan.

Biden risks facing serious opposition from Republicans in the House of Representatives who oppose expanding military aid to Ukraine beyond the previously approved budget. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy continues to be under pressure from far-right party members who have criticized him because of the May deal with the president of the country to increase the level of public debt. In July, 70 Republicans from the House of Representatives voted for an amendment to the defense bill to stop all funding for Ukraine.

At the same time, there is no consensus in the Republican Party on Biden’s request – and tying military assistance to Ukraine to the consequences of disaster relief may attract non-radical Republicans. But sources in the US Republican Party hint that if McCarthy supports the Democrats on this issue, then there will be a “possibility of holding a vote” on his removal from office. Prior to this, McCarthy said that any additional assistance to Ukraine should be included in the Pentagon budget for 2024 agreed under the deal to increase the public debt in the amount of $886 billion.

According to the Washington Post in August, Washington has sent Ukraine $66.2 billion in military, financial and humanitarian aid since the beginning of the Russian military operation. Thus, Kyiv became the largest recipient of US aid since World War II. According to the Pentagon, at the end of July 2023, the volume of military assistance provided to Kyiv by Washington exceeded $43 billion.

At the same time, the Pentagon did not have much money left to help Kiev from the $45 billion additional military funding approved in December 2022 by Congress (this amount was distributed between Kiev and NATO allies). So, on August 8, Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said that one of the funding lines – the Presidential Drawdown Authority (presidential orders for the issuance of weapons from the presence of the armed forces) left only $ 6 billion, which was discovered “as a result of a reassessment” of the price of this equipment in downward side. The other part of Kiev’s funding comes through the “Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative” and concerns the purchase of weapons from industry and other countries (Singh could not tell about the balance of funds there, but on June 15 the Pentagon mastered $10.4 billion out of $12.3 billion), grants and loans are also allocated within the framework of “Foreign Military Financing”, through which they want to provide assistance to Taiwan from Ukrainian funds. The latest US aid package for Ukraine was allocated at the end of July ($400 million).

Now the situation in Congress is aggravated by the fact that on September 30 the fiscal year will end in the United States, and hence the opportunity to spend the allocated funds. After leaving the vacation, which is now underway, parliamentarians will need to consider budget issues in the first place in order to prevent a shutdown (suspension of government funding). Thus, the issue of additional assistance to Ukraine may acquire a different context in the internal political layouts due to the approach of hour X.

Differences in the US Congress on the issue of financing Ukraine have already arisen, says Alexei Naumov, an expert at the Russian International Affairs Council. Increasingly, the Republican Party is asking how much money can be spent without providing robust oversight of the amounts already spent. For this reason, Republicans demand accountability from Ukraine, the expert says. Despite this, it is likely that Biden’s request will be approved: the appetite to continue helping Ukraine remains, and the patience of the Republicans has not yet been exhausted, the expert notes. The additional request is in line with Biden’s political line to support Ukraine, and that line is likely to be successful so far, Naumov says. The reason is that the fate of the Ukrainian counter-offensive is not completely clear now: Washington is hoping for its success. The suspension of the work of the US government is not yet to be expected, the expert believes: parliamentarians will take the so-called stopgap measures (temporary measures) in order to continue financing the federal budget at the current level. There is little time left for this, and therefore, most likely, the issue of supporting Ukraine will be tied to one of these projects.