The US Senate agreed on a budget plan with cuts in aid to Ukraine

Democrats and Republicans in the US Senate on the night of September 27 Moscow time agreed on a draft short-term budget until November 17. With support from both houses of Congress, it could help delay the shutdown of the federal government by six weeks. Otherwise it will happen on September 30th.

The preliminary agreement was reached, among other things, thanks to a reduction in the amount of planned short-term military assistance to Ukraine: senators propose to allocate $4.49 billion for it and allocate $1.65 billion in additional financial assistance instead of the $24 billion requested by US President Joe Biden in August from Congress, among other expenditure items.

The deal awaits one more vote in the Senate, after which the text of the bill will be sent to the US House of Representatives. There, Republicans still cannot agree on the terms of government funding.

Over the past two weeks, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has been trying to enlist the support of far-right members of his party who refused to vote for a short-term budget and demanded, among other things, spending cuts, the creation of a commission to discuss the problem of the national debt, etc.

McCarthy proposed voting not for a single short-term budget project, but for 12 separate long-term funding programs for federal departments, including the Pentagon.

On Tuesday, September 26, members of the House of Representatives voted to begin discussing these documents. Top on the agenda are budget plans for defense, agriculture, the State Department and homeland security.

On Friday, September 29, the speaker plans to bring up for discussion the financing of border control and the creation of a special commission to discuss public debt problems. If approved, the listed bills will provide funding for the listed areas until the end of the fiscal year (until September 30, 2024).

After voting on individual projects, they will be sent to the Senate for approval. But there is a risk that Democrats will not vote for them.

House Republicans are proposing aggregate spending cuts of $60 billion (they did not affect defense spending and non-discretionary spending – spending items that are difficult to change: pensions and health insurance for veterans), while Democrats oppose spending cuts of that size.

The most active opponent of allocating funds to Ukraine was Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene. “How many Republicans will vote to give Biden carte blanche to fund his proxy war with Russia?” – the politician said on her page on the social network X (formerly Twitter).

She also urged her colleagues not to even discuss a separate bill to finance the Pentagon, but in the end she found herself alone. In June, the US President said that America would support Ukraine “as long as it takes.”

At the same time, according to a survey conducted by SSRS commissioned by CNN (dated August 4, 2023), 55% of Americans believe that the US Congress should not approve new aid packages for Ukraine. 51% believe the United States has already done enough.

Republicans will not achieve a significant reduction or cessation of military assistance to Ukraine, Victoria Zhuravleva, head of the Center for North American Studies at IMEMO RAS, told Vedomosti. Taking into account the balance of internal political forces, as well as the existing system of budget approval, both parties have no choice but to make concessions to each other, the expert believes.

She also emphasized that the demands of the right wing of the Republican Party regarding Ukraine are a kind of pre-election technique, directed not so much against Kyiv as against Biden. It is unclear how long it will take the House of Representatives to pass the budget resolution and reconcile it with the version passed by the Senate. Therefore, a shutdown seems inevitable, says political scientist Yan Veselov.

Under the Antideficiency Act of 1884, federal agencies cannot use funds without the consent of Congress. In the event that the Legislature cannot approve 12 appropriations bills, all federal agencies must suspend activity—except in special cases—until the situation is resolved. If Congress accepts only part of the appropriations, then only those departments that did not approve them will not work.

The powers of the US President allow Biden, if necessary, to bypass financial restrictions from Congress and allocate part of the funds to Ukraine, recalled American specialist, Doctor of Law Alexander Domrin. “These are the so-called residual powers of the president, when, within the framework of the constitutional system of checks and balances, he can direct a small share of the budget to one of the initiatives,” the expert explained.

He clarified that this tool is used only in cases of extreme necessity. According to Domrin, in the event of a shutdown, Biden is unlikely to allocate money to Kyiv bypassing Congress, as this will negatively affect his rating and prospects for re-election.