I believe that we have some obligations under the Budapest Memorandum to help Ukraine, so our allies know they can trust our word and will also honor their agreements with us. However, I’ve also been asking: Is anyone checking to make sure the aid is going to where it’s supposed to be going?
Joe Biden seems to be acting like we have a bottomless pit of money to just throw out there for Ukraine. According to the New York Times, in March, Congress approved $13.6 billion to help Ukraine, including $3.5 billion for military aid, $6.9 billion for other aid, and $3 billion for the deployment of our soldiers to the various NATO-allied countries.
Now, Biden is asking for $33 billion more, claiming that what was asked for last month has already been spent. This is out of control.
They spent $13.6 billion in a month, seriously? So then, if the war isn’t over in a couple of months, can we expect Biden to come back and ask for still more? At what point does it become enough, after we have people not able to make ends meet because of the Biden inflation? Where is the attention to resolving that? And what effect is all this spending going to have on that? How about attending to the issues at our border?
Biden also just asked for $1.3 billion last week — what’s the justification for this huge jump up in money, even, since then?
The proposal includes more than $20 billion in new military and security assistance, including new authority to quickly transfer weapons to Ukraine out of military stocks and supercharging a Pentagon program to arm its military. The administration is also proposing billions in economic and humanitarian aid as part of the package.
In case you missed that, they’re transferring our weapons out of our military stocks to do this.
But that isn’t all. He wants this to be a permanent thing — a constant funnel of money to Ukraine to help their “democracy.” Are we allowed to talk about corruption and, again, who this would go to?
In a White House address announcing the funding request, President Joe Biden said it is “critical this funding gets approved and approved as quickly as possible.”
He also framed the sum as a way to begin a transition from just-in-time military and economic aid to a new, long-term effort to sustain both Ukrainian civil society and backstop the young democracy. The new funding will begin “the transition to longer-term security assistance that’s going to help Ukraine continue to defend against Russian aggression,” Biden said.
Let’s hope that Congress asks some serious questions on what’s happening here and doesn’t just pistol- whip this through.
In making this request, Joe Biden also let us know that he’s getting worse. On Wednesday, we saw his brain break in the middle of talking at an event honoring teachers. It was bad.
But he had another one today that was just awful. I think he even had a teleprompter, but he still couldn’t get the word “kleptocracy” out, as he claimed they were going to seize the property of Russian oligarchs. “The guys who are the kleptocracies.” He should know something about kleptocracy, but that doesn’t help him here.
Close up, it’s even worse. This isn’t a stutter.