The debt ceiling fight may be over, but a new battle over where money will be allocated is brewing between Republicans on either side of the Ukraine funding debate.
Although the compromise budget increased defense spending by 3% for 2024, with inflation near 5%, that so-called increase amounts to a cut in spending power, as reported by The Dallas Express.
Senate Republicans do not like what this portends for U.S. military aid to Ukraine, a cause that GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has called the “number one priority for the United States.” Therefore, Senate Republicans are devising a supplemental aid package for Ukraine to allocate more funds than are currently budgeted.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and McConnell issued a joint statement during the final passage of the debt ceiling bill in the Senate of their intention not to let the new budget set the limit for military spending.
“[The] debt ceiling deal does nothing to limit the Senate’s ability to appropriate emergency supplemental funds to ensure our military capabilities are sufficient to deter China, Russia and our other adversaries,” the statement read, as reported by The Hill.
However, the Senate wish list for Ukraine is meeting some stiff resistance in the House, where Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has set out to defy the Senate’s most powerful war hawks.
“I mean, Lindsey wants to spend money on every war in the world,” McCarthy said. “Show me why I’m spending money. You’ve got to win the argument.”
McCarthy’s own support for Ukraine has come into question in the past. He initially took a critical view of the $110 billion already allocated to Ukraine by Washington, warning in October that Republicans would not write a “blank check.” But after facing fierce blowback, he changed his tune in May, giving the embattled country his “full support.”
Now it appears that McCarthy will again incur the wrath of those supporting Ukraine.
“I’m not going to pre-judge what some of them [in the Senate] do, but if they think they’re writing a supplemental because they want to go around an agreement we just made, it’s not going anywhere,” he told Punchbowl News.