John Jefferson
Billions of dollars allocated for Ukraine will expire at the end of the month if Congress does not act, according to a warning from the Biden administration.
Some 10% of the $61 billion in funding Congress passed for Ukraine in April res unspent – and the White House has requested Congress extend its Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) to offer aid to Ukraine beyond a Sept. 30 deadline.
“We have $5.9 billion left in Ukraine Presidential Drawdown Authority, all but $100 million of which will expire at the end of the fiscal year,” Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Friday.
“The department will continue to provide drawdown packages in the near future and is working with Congress to seek an extension of PDA [presidential drawdown] authorities beyond the end of the fiscal year.”
The Biden administration has asked Congress to attach an extension of the authority to a continuing resolution, the last-minute, must-pass spending legislation it is working on to keep the government open and funded in fiscal year 2025. Officials have said they want the authority extended for another year.
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The request prompted groans from Republican defense hawks who say there should not be any resources left in the tank for Ukraine – those should have been allocated before the deadline.
“There shouldn’t be an extension request. They’ve had five months to spend this money,” Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Fox News Digital.
“This is the latest example of the Biden-Harris administration slow-walking support while Ukraine fights for survival,” a Republican senator said.
“Without asking Congress to appropriate a single new cent and with just the stroke of his pen, President Biden could help change the course of the war in favor of our Ukrainian friends. Until then, the drip-drip-drip method of support for Ukraine will only continue to cost time and lives rather than making a meaningful difference on the battlefield.”
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Congress passed a $95 billion aid package with $61 billion for Ukraine in April. The White House had hoped to allocate that money last year, but divisions in the House GOP delayed the bill’s passing.
And while the Pentagon claimed to be working with Congress to get approval to offer aid to Ukraine beyond the end of the fiscal year, Rep. Tom Cole, R–Okla., – the top member in charge of funding packages – said he hadn’t heard from the White House at all on the matter.
“We have not [talked about extending drawdown authority],” he said. “Nobody from the White House has called me.”
A House congressional aide told Fox News Digital “there are active conversations with committees of jurisdiction regarding PDA authorities in a CR.”
But House Speaker Mike Johnson, R–La., faced severe backlash – even a threat to his job – last time he passed funding for Ukraine. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., launched a motion to vacate and got 11 Republicans to join her in attempting to oust the speaker.
If Congress fails to extend the PDA, defense officials are working on other ways to use the money. They have said there is some $4 billion in longer-term funding through the Ukrainian Security Initiative that will not expire until September 2025. But that money is used to pay for weapons contracts that would not be delivered for more than a year.
Ryder explained that the PDA allows the Pentagon to spend money from its own budget to send military aid to Ukraine, or to reimburse the department for weapons it sends.
The administration’s request for more time to spend money on Ukraine is a stark change from last winter when they were pleading for more funds to send there.
The U.S. regularly announces new drawdown packages, sometimes two to three a month. Officials told CNN the delay in getting aid to Ukraine is sometimes due to an unwillingness to pull from U.S. stockpiles that could risk domestic readiness.
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“We’ve authorized $61 billion [for Ukraine],” said Rep. Mark Alford, R-Mo., a member of the Armed Services Committee. “This current weak president squandered his authority to take that money, take those armaments, and get them over in a timely manner for [President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy to actually win this war.”
“This is part and parcel of the administration’s really halting view of this war. They don’t trust the Ukrainians, they’re terrified of escalation, even though we’ve blown through many supposed [President Vladimir] Putin red lines with no response from the Russians,” said a senior GOP congressional aide.
“The fighting is still heavy, and so this is just unacceptable for the administration to backtrack on what was an implicit agreement between Congress and the administration that we were going to support the Ukrainians at a certain level and pace throughout 2024, which we have not.”
“Anyone who’s been to Ukraine recently can tell you how precarious the situation on the frontline is,” one pro-Ukraine expert said. “That aid should have been out the door months ago, and we should have never been in this situation in the first place. But [national security adviser Jake] Sullivan thinks he can ‘escalation manage.’”
The Republican-led House is expected to vote on a CR that would extend government funding at 2023 levels for six months on Wednesday, but that bill has widespread opposition from both sides of the aisle. A failure to pass it would send GOP leadership back to the drawing board. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D–N.Y., has been urging Johnson to work with him on a short-term bipartisan CR deal – but has not yet passed any spending deals in the Senate.
Schumer would likely prioritize extending Ukraine funding – though he could not be reached for comment on the matter. Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Chairs Ben Cardin, D-Md., and Jack Reed, D-R.I., told Fox News Digital they support the move.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R–La., suggested such a proposal would need to start in the Senate. “You really can’t have a negotiation when there’s only one side putting ideas on the table,” he said. “The Senate really needs to put something on the table quickly. Why do they want to wait until the midnight hour to start doing their job?”
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