Ukraine Lend-Lease Act Stripped From National Defense Authorization Act, Tighter Controls Placed on Biden

streiff reporting for RedState 

Congress has stripped an extension of Biden's signature "Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act" from the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, thereby ending the program. The same conference committee that removed the Lend-Lease provisions also reauthorized Ukraine spending through calendar year 2025.

The Senate passed the Lend-Lease Act unanimously and the House with only ten dissenting votes. Loosely modeled on FDR's famous Lend-Lease Act of 1941, it permitted Biden to "lend or lease defense articles to the Government of Ukraine or to governments of Eastern European countries impacted by the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine to help bolster those countries' defense capabilities and protect their civilian populations from potential invasion or ongoing aggression by the armed forces of the Government of the Russian Federation."

The relevant portion of the 3039-page conference report is found on page 2687.

This was unexpected and a bit of a surprise. The House is viewed as more skeptical of Ukraine support than the Senate, yet the House passed an extension of the Ukraine Lend-Lease Act while the Senate didn't. The House deferring to the Senate shows that the Senate killed the bill for a reason and not out of oversight.

Two other provisions indicate Congress's patience with Jake freakin Sullivan's grotesque mismanagement of our interests in the Ukraine War (and yes, I think we have interests there that surpass any interest we have in Israel).

First, aid assistance in the bill is authorized through calendar year 2025.

As you can see, the Senate version would have extended the authorization through the end of 2026.

Second, Congress requires a rather detailed report from the Defense Intelligence Agency on the Ukraine situation in March. It seems to me, and I'm open to being wrong here, that tasking the DIA, which works for the DNI, rather than the DNI or CIA for the report, is rather curious. It may be normal, but it strikes me as bureaucratically weird.

This suggests that Congress has lost confidence in Biden's ability to manage any part of this conflict, which puts Congress and the public in general alignment.

If the war in Ukraine is important enough for us to become involved in, it is important enough to win. The damage done to America's political credibility by its self-inflicted losses in Iraq and Afghanistan and its shameless sucking up to Iran shows that Biden and his entourage can't be trusted with something as important as national security. It certainly can't have him untrammeled authority because it is obvious that Biden pursues these things for self-aggrandizement. The Ukraine Lend-Lease Act, for instance, has never been invoked. The only excuse I can find for it is so that he can say he did it. 

Jake Sullivan's management of the war has been a travesty. His actions have done as much to draw out the war and embolden Putin into believing that he can outlast the coalition supporting Ukraine as they have to assist Ukraine. It is high time that this bunch was reined in and had to start explaining their actions.