'Testy' Senate Briefing on Ukraine Aid Explodes Into 'Screaming Match'
© AFP 2023 / JULIA NIKHINSON
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The prospect of US Congress approving a supplementary aid package to Ukraine before the current tranche of funds for the regime in Kiev runs out by year’s end looks pretty bleak. Republicans are refusing to support any further Ukraine aid without US border policy changes, but their proposals are being dismissed by the Democrats as unpalatable.
A “testy” atmosphere prevailed at Tuesday's classified Senate briefing on Ukraine, Chad Pergram, a senior congressional correspondent for Fox News, has tweeted. Tensions flared between the Republicans and the Democrats over further funding for the Kiev regime, with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) accusing one GOP senator of "screaming at a general", according to Pergram’s post on X (formerly Twitter).
Screenshot of X post by Chad Pergram, Senior Congressional Correspondent for Fox News.
© Photo : ChadPergram/X
As tempers boiled over, some senators are described as having stormed out of the meeting in protest, further dimming the prospects for any bipartisan agreement in the near future.
Ukraine Aid Conundrum
At the beginning of the week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that a procedural test vote on a supplemental package, which includes funding for Ukraine, would take place on Wednesday. In light of this, a classified briefing for Senators was scheduled for December 5. The purpose of the briefing was to provide all 100 US senators with a chance to ask questions pertaining to the Biden administration's funding request.
In October, US President Joe Biden asked Congress for nearly $106 billion in extra funding to provide further support to Ukraine, Israel, the Indo-Pacific region, as well as to fund operations on the US southern border. To avert a government shutdown, the US House of Representatives passed a standalone Israel aid package, which the White House and Senate Democrats have opposed. Negotiations have since continued between Democratic and Republican lawmakers to pass the foreign aid in conjunction with domestic border security measures.
The Biden administration has been warning that the United States would soon exhaust its aid for Ukraine unless prompt action is taken by Congress. On December 4, Shalanda Young, Biden's Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), penned a letter to lawmakers cautioning that, "There is no magical pot of funding available... We are out of money—and nearly out of time." Thus, to tackle this pressing matter, a closed-door briefing was organized, which was attended by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Pentagon Chief Lloyd Austin, and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. C.Q. Brown. In addition, leaders from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the US Agency for International Development were present at the briefing.
Zelensky Skips Out
Furthermore, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky who was supposed to address lawmakers via teleconference canceled at the last minute. “Zelensky, by the way, could not make it … something happened at the last minute,” the Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer told the media. Instead, Zelensky's chief of staff Andriy Yermak, along with Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, and the speaker of parliament visited the Capitol.
28 November 2023, 12:01 GMT
Closed-Door Meeting Meltdown
With Zelensky conspicuously absent, it was up to Biden administration officials to make the pitch for additional aid to Ukraine. However, tempers flared among Republicans as they were denied answers about the US border crisis. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) was accused by Chuck Schumer of attempting to "hijack the meeting" by fixating on border security.
Screenshot of X post by Chad Pergram, Senior Congressional Correspondent for Fox News.
© Photo : ChadPergram/X
In turn, Republicans bemoaned the absence of border officials at the gathering, reportedly accusing Schumer of not wanting "to have a negotiation about it."
"He wouldn’t bring anybody in here to talk about it... Clearly the military people in the room don’t want to talk about it," Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota, told reporters. Cramer was described as confronting General Brown at the briefing, accusing him of never having been to the border to witness what was unfolding there. Cramer (R-N.D.) dismissed the entire briefing as “ridiculous” and “unserious”.
At one particularly boiling point, Kevin Cramer, along with Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) reportedly started shouting questions at Biden administration officials.
“I took them on with the microphone in my hand... I asked Gen. Brown his best military advice... Is supporting Ukraine and Israel important enough that Democrats could at least consider reluctantly supporting some southern border security? He wanted to talk about Ukraine,” Cramer told reporters.
As for Schumer's stance, Cramer added:
“Chuck Schumer is doing everything he can to flush this whole thing down the drain. Keeping the southern border wide open is so important to him he's willing to kill the supplemental to do it. And that's exactly what he's gonna do,” he was cited as saying after the briefing.
Frustrated Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.), the second-highest Republican in the upper chamber of the US Congress, was quoted as saying:
“They didn't have answers to some of the questions our members had, specifically about the broad national security crisis we face including at the border. They didn’t want to respond to that.”
Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) was of the same opinion, clarifying that, “Their clear lack of preparedness to discuss and clear apprehension to utter a word as it pertains to border security policy was not just an oversight... It was intentional.”
It was evident that there was a lack of progress when, just 40 minutes into the briefing, a number of Republicans stormed out in anger. Senator Deb Fischer, a Republican from Nebraska, criticized the Biden administration for consistently regurgitating information about Ukraine without addressing any GOP queries regarding the situation on the US-Mexico border.
“When the border was brought up … there was spirited discussion, and I don’t think Democrats realized there will be no movement on a supplemental unless we have policy changes on the border, our own border... We don’t know who’s coming into this country, and we’re supposed to tell Americans that the United States can’t balance being a leader in the world … and yet we’re not able to protect our own country at the southern border? That is baloney,” Fischer said.
The Republican senator who is a senior Senate Armed Services Committee member added that “Many of us just walked out, we’ve had it, we’ve had it.” Senate Intelligence Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) also told reporters that, "Feelings were running high.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell reiterated that he wanted all GOP lawmakers to vote "no" on the procedural vote on international aid “to make the point, hopefully for the final time, that we insist on meaningful changes to the border.”
14 November 2023, 16:22 GMT
As for Mike Johnson, who was appointed as new speaker of the House of Representatives on October 25, he reiterated after the briefing that the position of Congressional Republicans on foreign aid had been articulated clearly. "We reiterated in the auditorium what I've been saying privately publicly to these White House officials in the SCIF, and that is that there are two essential and I think eminently reasonable prerequisites to the additional funding to Ukraine," the speaker was cited as saying. These preconditions are, specifically, that supplemental Ukraine funding be linked to "enactment of transformative change" to the US border security laws. Furthermore, Johnson underscored the importance of "critical answers" being provided regarding "objectives, oversight of the funding, and our Ukraine strategy."
During the heated exchange between Democratic and Republican lawmakers regarding the passage of foreign aid alongside domestic border security measures, Republicans chose not to include military assistance for Ukraine in a stopgap spending bill to keep the government funded. The growing skepticism over propping up Kiev is being fueled by its failed counteroffensive, the Zelensky regime's infighting, and overall 'Ukraine fatigue'. Furthermore, as the US gears up for the 2024 presidential elections, it's hardly surprising that pressing domestic problems are likely to become prioritized.
5 October 2023, 18:50 GMT
