Senate and House Republicans are girding themselves for an internal battle over President Biden’s request for another $24 billion to continue funding the war and humanitarian assistance in Ukraine.
The GOP’s divisions over the war were on full display at last week’s presidential debate.
Republicans with traditional national security views — former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — battled with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy, who espoused an America-first view that is gaining traction among Trump-aligned Republicans
Polls show a majority of Republicans are skeptical of providing more aide to Ukraine, but Senate Republican sources say they expect a majority of Senate and House Republicans to ultimately support another Ukraine package — though it will encounter opposition from conservatives in both chambers.
A nationwide poll of 1,279 adults conducted for CNN by SSRS, an independent research company, in July found that 55 percent of Americans and 71 percent of Republicans oppose Congress authorizing additional funding to support Ukraine.
Seventy House Republicans voted last month for an amendment sponsored by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) to cut off all security assistance to Ukraine. It failed by a vote of 70-358.
The vote, however, showed that Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) will have to rely on Democrats to pass any bill to keep weapons and economic aid flowing to Ukraine.
And McCarthy is certain to come under pressure from conservatives in his conference to demand spending concessions to offset the cost of a Ukraine supplemental spending bill after he declared in June that more money from Ukraine above the budget caps he and President Biden set for 2024 is “not going anywhere.”
Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) said last week that a threat to McCarthy’s Speakership is “inevitable” if he ignores conservatives’ demands for spending cuts and other reforms.
“If we continue to rely on the Democrats to pass important legislation out of the House, it’s going to be a real problem for leadership,” he warned on Steve Bannon’s “War Room.”
Biden this month asked lawmakers to provide $40 billion altogether in emergency spending to fund the war in Ukraine and provide federal disaster funds to repair damage caused by fires and storms, and to increase security at the Southern border.
Senate Republican aides say the timing of the package is highly uncertain given the opposition from House conservatives and questions about whether McCarthy will try to rely on Democrats to pass the emergency bill.
“The Senate would have to go first on something like this because McCarthy’s in a really tough spot. He can’t put forth a Ukraine funding resolution with Democrat votes or he’s putting his Speakership in grave danger, because in the House Republican caucus there’s not as much support for un-offset Ukraine spending as there is in the Senate,” said Brian Darling, a GOP strategist and former Senate aide.
The divisions within the Republican Party over sending billions of more military and humanitarian assistance were laid bare at the Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee, where Ramaswamy called continued U.S. support for the war “disastrous,” and DeSantis argued that additional military and economic aid “should be contingent” on European allies spending more on the effort.
Those same divisions exist among Republican senators and House members.
“Vivek Ramaswamy was saying what most Republicans think. His view that there needs to a check on Ukraine funding, it can’t be a blank check. I think most Republicans agree with him on that,” Darling said.
“On Capitol Hill there are deep divisions in the caucus on how to treat the Ukraine funding measure,” he added.
Ramaswamy argued the same military resources should be used to stop the “invasion” of migrants across the Southern border and declared “we are driving Russia further into China’s hands.”
Attaching Ukraine funding and emergency disaster assistance to a stopgap government funding measure that needs to pass by Sept. 30 is an option, but members of the House Freedom Caucus signaled last week that would face a tough fight in the lower chamber.
“The supplemental could maybe hitch a ride on the [continuing resolution], and it’s something that’s very dicey. The reason why it’s dicey is [it] divides both parties,” said James Wallner, a former senior Senate Republican aide, who also noted that Democratic progressives are also leery about the nation’s open-ended commitment to the war.
House conservatives say they will oppose any continuing resolution to fund the government that “continues Democrats’ bloated COVID-era spending” and called on congressional leaders to lower the top-line defense and nondefense number to $1.471 trillion — below the total spending cap Biden and McCarthy agreed to for fiscal 2024.
They also pledged to “oppose any blank check for Ukraine in any supplemental appropriations bill.”
This raises the prospect that McCarthy will be pressured to insist that any new money for Ukraine fit under the discretionary spending caps he agreed to in May, a departure from the traditional practice of not counting emergency spending against annual budget caps.
Senate Democrats and many Senate Republicans, however, have no interest in cutting defense and nondefense programs beyond what the Senate and House agreed to when it voted to raise the debt limit in June.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), the chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, for example, says she considers the negotiations over attaching stricter work requirements to federal food assistance settled by the debt limit deal and closed for further discussion this year.
Defense hawks in the Senate Republican conference demanded that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) pledge on the Senate floor in June that the defense spending cap in the debt limit deal wouldn’t prevent the Senate from passing supplemental spending legislation to provide more money to the Defense Department or respond to a national emergency.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), one of the strongest Republican proponents of supporting the war in Ukraine, pointed out at an event in Kentucky earlier this month that “most of the money that we spend related to Ukraine is actually spent in the U.S., replenishing weapons, more modern weapons.”
A Senate Republican aide predicted that ultimately there will be enough Republican support in both chambers to pass another major bill to support Ukraine and cited the strong arguments Haley, Pence and Christie made in favor of stopping Russian aggression before it reaches European allies.
“A lot of the candidates fought back against the idea of not supporting Ukraine. Differences remain, but I think most Republicans support the idea of helping the Ukrainians,” the source said.
Haley, Pence and Christie warned of serious national security consequences if the United States walks away from the conflict in Ukraine.
“Vivek, if we do the giveaway that you want to give Putin to give him his land, it’s not going to be too long before he rolls across a NATO border,” Pence sternly warned his rival.
“Frankly, our men and women of our armed forces are going to have to go and fight him. I want to let the Ukrainians fight and drive the Russians out,” he declared.