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The Biden administration has called on the US Congress to approve an additional $24 billion package for Ukraine as only a few weeks’ worth of funds are currently available. The Democrat push to ensure the war continues comes as Donald Trump promised to end it if he was re-elected in 2024 and is now leading in the polls over Joe Biden.
John Kirby, the strategic communications coordinator at the White House National Security Council, said in an interview with CNN that the US has enough funding to “last another few weeks or so” but that not having the additional funding requested would have a huge “impact” on their ability to support Ukraine in the autumn and winter. Kirby also urged members of Congress to hurry to approve the additional $24 billion requested by the White House for Kiev.
He added that a possible shutdown of Congress due to a lack of agreement on the budget, whether for the 2024 fiscal year or a short-term emergency budget, could negatively impact the supply of weapons to Ukraine, with effects starting as early as October.
However, there is major pushback on the Democratic hope to continue pumping resources into the financial blackhole that Ukraine has become. Leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump continually slams the Biden administration’s policy, and nearly 30 congressional Republicans sent a letter to the Office of Management and Budget director saying they reject the request for an additional $24 billion for Ukraine.
“The American people deserve to know what their money has gone to. How is the counteroffensive going? Are the Ukrainians any closer to victory than they were six months ago? What is our strategy, and what is the president’s exit plan? What does the administration define as victory in Ukraine?” the letter says.
The lawmakers highlighted that it would be “an absurd abdication of congressional responsibility” to grant additional aid for Ukraine without answers to the inquiries.
“For these reasons—and certainly until we receive answers to the questions above and others forthcoming—we oppose the additional expenditure for war in Ukraine included in your request,” the letter adds.
In late August, the White House requested additional funds from Congress to cover the federal government’s needs while agreeing to a full budget for fiscal year 2024. The short-term budget was designed to avoid a government shutdown due to the exhaustion of resources. The stoppage, known as “shutdown,” could occur as early as October 1, when the new fiscal year begins in the US. The provisional budget must be adopted by September 30, which marks less than 14 months until the next presidential election.
Another point of the Republican pushback against the Biden administration’s reckless funding plan for Ukraine is the consistently made promise by Trump to quickly find a resolution to end the conflict if he is elected for another term, with the latest made on September 25 at a rally in South Carolina. Furthermore, the former president declared that he would strive to avoid a Third World War, stressing that the current situation is very close to a global conflict.
A new Washington Post-ABC poll shows Joe Biden trailing Trump by ten percentage points. This is inconvenient news for the establishment media, who responded aggressively to the poll, saying it was flawed. For his part, Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, called the decision to release the poll results “ridiculous.”
“Ignore the Washington Post–ABC poll,” Sabato wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “How could you even publish a poll so absurd on its face? Will be a lingering embarrassment for you. Just plain embarrassing – for them.”
Despite the criticisms, Sunday’s ABC This Week host, Martha Raddatz, stood by the poll and said: “Whatever caveats, whether that is an outlier, that’s a tough one to spin.”
Even after mocking the Washington Post–ABC poll in an article, The Guardian had to concede that “Trump does hold commanding leads in national and key state polls regarding the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.”
This is hardly surprising since Americans can see how their quality of life has drastically declined in the few short years that Biden has been president. Americans want issues like the cost of living to improve. Instead, the president makes excuses for why this cannot be achieved despite pumping well over $100 billion into the financial blackhole that Ukraine has become, and this is why Trump will likely continue leading in the polls unless there is a major change in the current political dynamic.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Featured image is from CBS/InfoBrics
