House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) suggested on Tuesday that major Ukraine aid may be more difficult to pass if the House is controlled by Republicans after the upcoming mid-term elections.
“I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine. They just won’t do it. … It’s not a free blank check,” McCarthy told Punchbowl News.
While spending billions on the war in Ukraine still has strong bipartisan support, 57 House Republicans voted against the $40 billion Ukraine aid bill that was passed in May.
McCarthy and other Republican leaders are still in favor of supporting Ukraine, but more GOP members are said to be questioning the policy. So far, the US has authorized over $67 billion to spend on the war, more than Russia’s entire military budget for 2021.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, downplayed McCarthy’s comments and said he believes the GOP concerns are more over the lack of oversight.
There still is virtually no oversight for the tens of billions of dollars that have been sent to Ukraine, which covers not only military aid but also direct funding of the Ukrainian government.
“I think there’s still broad bipartisan support for the effort,” McCaul said. “I think he’s just saying we’re not going to write a blank check without oversight and accountability, which my committee will be providing.”
The Punchbowl News report said that if Republicans win the majority in the House or the Senate, it could prompt the Biden administration to press for a full year of Ukraine aid to be approved during the lame-duck period.
So a blank check is ok — we should just gulp and swallow about how it was spent. What’s not to love! “I think there’s still broad bipartisan support for the effort,” McCaul said. “I think he’s just saying we’re not going to write a blank check without oversight and accountability, which my committee will be providing.”
Yep – ‘military spending with new xxtra-strong fiscal oversight! – it’s two!…two!…two scams in one!’
keeps the barrels of military bucks flowing in the new forever war…plus adds that good old Republican ingredient – the shit-sweet reek of fiscal rectitude that fills the air whenever a Republican or mainstream Dem walks by…
“Ukraine Aid May Be More Difficult to Pass in Republican-Controlled House Rep. Kevin McCarthy says GOP lawmakers may be hesitant to give a ‘blank check’ to Ukraine”
What was your first clue that the most corrupt country on earth (drag queen Zellensky) was stealing the cash and selling off the weapons provided by the Western criminal politicians like Joey Biden?
Political posturing.
Somehow I’m going to make a wild guess that when a vote is taken, lipstick will be applied to this pig and plenty of votes will show up to support more going to Ukraine.
Better said, more grease will be applied to Republican palms.
One team of warmongers will change the other team of warmongers and they will carry on with the business as usual.
Tag team war
How about no check, blank or otherwise? I believe we’re approaching a critical mass of people who don’t want to fund this nonsense anymore no matter what McCaul believes. We’ve had thirty years of this crap since the end of the Cold War.
” I believe we’re approaching a critical mass of people who don’t want to fund this nonsense anymore”
If only – though a Responsible Statecraft poll showed a majority wanted diplomacy added to military aid, as I recall only about 10% said they felt strongly about that – hence a still-weak US antiwar movement. (And I write that as an activist in that movement, btw.)
Best I can say is those numbers could be worse, given how the mainstream press peddled the Russiagate fraud, and its warmongering.
Actually, we don’t need diplomacy. We just need to close the spigot at a date certain and make sure Zelensky understands he has to extend his upturned palm in another direction.
“we don’t need diplomacy. We just need to close the spigot at a date certain and make sure Zelensky understands”
Well, that’s a type of diplomacy too. More generally ‘diplomacy’ – including, but not limited to what Z. is given to understand – is (pardon my mixing metaphors) the wedge in the door to get to get at that spigot, imo.
Even the propaganda regurgitating, war cheerleading NYT, in an ‘exception that proves the rule’ editorial on the limits of US aid, feinted a nanosec in that direction when it wrote:
“as the war continues, Mr. Biden should…make clear to…Zelensky and his people that there is a limit to how far the United States and NATO will go to confront Russia, and limits to the arms, money and political support they can muster.” (5/17/22)
In domestic politics, the excluded concept of diplomacy is not just ‘an alternative to war’ – it opens democratic discourse on the institutionally anti-democratic conduct of US foreign policy.
The NYT and others are motivated by concern over the economic well being of the USA, not the well being of democratic norms or demonstrable postures of civic responsibility among the various nation states.
This is the guy who said that once the GOP controls the House and Senate, they will rid Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Can’t wait. In between trying to impeach Biden and following their cult leader’s demands from Florida, when will they find the time?
Remember the old Fran filter commercial? “Pay me now or pay me later”. If you don’t halt Putin aggression in Ukraine, you will paying to halt him somewhere else.
That is such nonsense. To believe it, one has to be both deeply ignorant of the relevant history and geopolitics and thoroughly brainwashed by Western propaganda.
And to believe that Putin will stop with Ukraine one would have to be deeply ignorant of the relevant history of dictators. How many agreements were made with Hitler before the start of WW2? And what happens? He broke them all, it is in their DNA. I’m big opponent of war, but I believe the best way to stop a war is via strength.
Now maybe Putin would quit after taking Ukraine, but I’m not willing to take that chance and neither is the West.
At this point, if Putin can find any way at all to extract Russia’s teat from the Ukraine wringer that does’t end his political career (and possibly life), he’s unlikely to get fooled into making the same kind of mistake again.
Yes but that rather requires that he loses big enough to be unable to portray the result as it always being their plan – you know like the attack on Kyiv only being a diversion and never planned to last. So only if no new territory is taken would I think Putin would not later try to strongarm e.g. Georgia (again).
I disagree.
I still believe that “the plan” was, initially, to secure the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics and a land corridor connecting them to Crimea, and that the move on Kyiv was a strategic feint to tie down Ukrainian forces and prevent them from successfully contesting that actual goal.
In other words, it was supposed to be Georgia Part II: This Time It’s Personal. A quick and efficient war with a limited objective.
When that didn’t work out, the choice was to withdraw — politically unpalatable, but just MAYBE doable at that point and portrayed as a mere taking of Ukraine to the woodshed — or escalate and continue menacing other parts of Ukraine while trying to get those actual desired areas secured.
The decision to do the latter means that now Putin can’t credibly declare “victory” UNLESS he secures that initial goal. Which is why the troops from the “partial mobilization” will likely be brought in to LPR, DPR, and the land corridor to establish and fortify a line of control that the troops being pushed back from e.g. Kharkiv, Kherson, and Zaporizhia can fall back on and hold (and to continue trying to pacify those areas).
If he can get those two seceded republics and a land corridor, he can “generously” “negotiate” away the two oblasts that he’s unable to hold anyway and still have a fig leaf of “victory.”
It’s possible, although I doubt it, that he’s personally humble enough to accept undisguised defeat. But his oligarch masters apparently aren’t. If he doesn’t manage to pull some kind of “victory” out of the hat for them, he’ll probably suffer a tragic accidental fall from a window or something so that someone willing to continue trying can replace him.
You second paragraph might be true. But it was a big mistake. It allow Ukraine to have a victory on a world wide stage. Which then led to more support for Ukraine. Not to mention the loss of substantial amount of men and equipment.
I think some of your observations of Russia’s position are cartoonish. Russia regards herself to be in extremis. People argue that Ukraine is a mighty foe because they are fighting for their nation. You completely miss the fact – and it is a fact – documented now for thirty years – that Russian leadership is fighting for the survival of the Russian state, and is therefore also in extremis, and if you don’t see that, based on everything NATO has done for thirty years – based on the ongoing US role in destabilizing all potential competitors – then I submit you are being willfully obtuse about what Ukraine is all about.
No, I don’t miss “the fact” that “Russian leadership is fighting for the survival of the Russian state.” I frequently reference EVERY regime’s conflation of itself with the country, and have pointed out the Russian regime’s sensitivity to NATO expansion in particular over and over for years.
I’m not a military expert by any means, I have not even been a soldier, so take my interpretation as that of an amateur. My reasons to believe that Kyiv was not just a feint are:
1) the wastage of the high quality VDV units send to take Hostomel – surely not needed for a feint
2) the very long and narrow advance along bigger roads approaching Kyiv not only from the north but also from Sumy
– again exposing the flanks to attack along so long lines seems unnecessary to pin forces around Kyiv
3) the usage of high quality equipment and good units in the supposed feint area
Had this just been a feint I would have expected them to advance over a broader front (to expose themselves less) and use units of lower quality and lower quality equipment – none of that was AFAIK the case.
I could be wrong, but I think that if the plan was a feint then it was carried out very badly – there is an Australian analyst who probably puts this very much better than I can see the Kyiv was a feint chapter 15:55 – 19:18
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH0xWWSJL00
That is where you and I will disagree. He is not the kind of guy that will stop over one loss. He will try again.
He’s 70 years old. While he would probably have liked to go out with a real military victory under his belt, at this point his main goal is probably to find some way out of the situation that lets him retire comfortably instead of having a fatal accident.
If he’s replaced before producing some semblance of “victory,” he’ll likely be replaced by a hard-liner/escalationist. If he can wrap this up with a “victory” that everyone understands was really an embarrassment, then his successor might be more cautious. But any likely successor is going to continue attempting to slow, halt, or reverse the disintegration of the Russian empire.
Its a war of attrition that Russia is slowly but surely bleeding out NATO in Ukraine. If NATO continues along this path it will be destroyed along with EUrope.
The breakaway regions are now Russian Federation, This means NATO/US is at war with Russia. Moscow is fighting this war with most of it reserves and equipment available if NATO openly attacks Russia.
As long as Americans agree to pay to their warmongers one trillion a year, NATO will remain a prosperous organization, though terribly criminal and corrupt.
Except hyper-inflation is the risk…..when you print to much money for the resources you can spend it on. Weimar Germany, stunning just how similar this is to the Nazi’s in WW2.
At some point you will have to face its all coming to an end. HHHHOOOOORRRRAAAAAAHHHHHHH.
A good real militarism cost a lot of money. US can afford it. Besides, they pushed it already a bit too far. Chinese military capacity is catching up with the military superpowers. Even if US abandon this policy, China will not stop.
You, five months ago:
“The Ukraine is losing up to 15,000 men per month to the war. The total Ukrainian casualties, dead and wounded, are likely already at 50,000. The weapons the U.S. and others provide, are not sufficient to sustain the war. The Ukraine has only 3 days reserves of diesel and gasoline left. The main parts of its forces are immobile and are getting surrounded by Russian forces. Their situation is hopeless.”
You, six months ago:
“We can now all agree that the ‘Russia is losing’ narrative has ended. The US/Nazi logistics are basically dead. No fuel, no lubricants, no ammo, no rotation, no meds, and no food and even almost no water. Western weapons which still are getting to the Donbass are either small and basically irrelevant, or destroyed long before they get anywhere. On paper the Ukronazi army still exists, in reality it is comprehensively defeated.”
The situation hasn’t changed. Its a war of attrition. The recent territorial gains by Ukraine are due to NATO stepping up their involvement and prioritising territory over men.
Consequently Russia has increased its involvement to counter NATO. Russia has 25 million reserves and will counter any escalation by NATO.
The Ukraine army has been destroyed, Russia is now in the process of destroying NATO. It will take time, time is on Russia’s side.
“The Ukraine army has been destroyed, Russia is now in the process of destroying NATO.”
And yet there are no NATO prisoners being paraded on RT, and no flag-covered caskets arriving in NATO capitals. If the Ukrainian army has been destroyed, who keeps killing Russians?
Time will tell, i am very comfortable with my assessment.
War of attrition? Considering NATO counties economies are 20 times bigger that Russia and find it hard to believe Russia is winning the war of attrition.
Russia can easily reduce NATO economy to the heap of radioactive ash.
Believe what you want to believe, time will tell. I have followed this war for nearly 9 years and its going in only 1 direction.
Thinking that Putin is a dictator is another sign of deep ignorance.
And I think you’re confused about your own belief about the best way to stop a war. What you think is strength is actually reckless escalation and provocation, which is dumb and dangerous. Big time.
LOL. What the heck would you call Putin? As for my belief, I will take Churchill philosophy over Neville Chamberlain philosophy any day. To do nothing and allow aggression to go unchecked is a path to bigger problems.
LOL, huh? Not simple ignorance, defiant ignorance.
Putin is the president of the Russian Federation. It’s an authoritarian government, as all Russian governments have been (although the drunken puppet Yeltsin was a piss-poor authoritarian — and piss-poor across the board, unless you were a wannabe oligarch seeking wealth by privatization). It is not a dictatorship and Putin is not a dictator.
Edit: Putin, in his four electoral wins, received 53.0%, 71.3%, 63.6% and 76.7% of the vote. Strong majorities after the 2000 election, but not the results typically seen in rigged elections of dictators.
Ah, yes. Putin as another Hitler. Preceded by Saddam as Hitler, Gaddafi as Hitler, etc. It’s depressingly-easy to convince Americans that there’s a new Hitler, foaming at the mouth, bent on world domination, leading each and every enemy of the moment. We will always be at war with Hitler!
Sigh.
In the Hitler-Chamberlain comparison, the US/NATO placed a losing bet on Putin accepting the role of Chamberlain.
That doesn’t make Putin’s current posture any more justifiable, but it does make it somewhat understandable. He and his backers have been pretty much in charge in Russia for 20 years now and haven’t previously exhibited much in the way of expansionist tendencies. His goal seems to have been to settle Ukraine’s hash vis a vis the seceded Donbas republics and make Crimea more secure. He’s not dumb. He knows he’s not going to reconstitute the Russian empire to its pre-1991 scope. He’s just trying to slow or halt its disintegration. Unfortunately, a quagmire in Ukraine is likely to have the opposite effect.
“Justifiable” or not is irrelevant and thinking that it does have relevance is a serious error in evaluating international relations. There is no uniform, agreed-upon, moral/ethical/legal code or philosophy that governs the behavior of nation states. There certainly is none that governs great powers. They follow international law only when it suits them. They follow moral or ethical precepts that are almost always flexible enough to fit the perceived needs and desires of the moment and aren’t much concerned with the judgments of others, except to the extent that others have the power to “interfere.” Nation states always believe their actions are justifiable.
Yes, and to end what Russian leaders almost uniformly believe is NATO’s existential threat to its national integrity. That is, the goal is just what Putin, Lavrov, et al. have said it is.
He hasn’t tried isn’t trying to do that. He has said that those who don’t regret the collapse of the USSR have no heart, but those who want to restore it have no brain.
I think Putin and the rest of the Russian leadership are probably trying to do just what they say they are trying to do: stop what they reasonably believe are Western threats to Russian security, protect the ethnic Russians who have been under siege by the extremist-dominated post-coup regime in Kiev, and crush the Nazi threat on their most sensitive border.
They may have misjudged the extremes to which the US-NATO would go to escalate and prolong the war, hoping to weaken Russia in a replay of the trap Brzezinski and the Americans set for the USSR in Afghanistan. I think the US intends to create a long-lasting quagmire. I don’t know how this existentially-dangerous (for civilization and, perhaps, for the biosphere) drama will play out, but I’m pretty sure that Russia believes that losing is not an option.
Yes, Russia’s rulers probably believe that losing is not an option, and probably, as you say, believe their actions are justifiable. Like other rulers, they tend to identify “the nation” with their particular ruling class. Nicholas II couldn’t imagine Russia without a tsar, Lenin couldn’t imagine Russia without a dictatorship of the proletariat, and Putin can’t imagine a Russia without … whatever you want to call the system that exists there at this time.
Truman didn’t consider losing an option in Korea, Johnson/Nixon didn’t consider losing an option in Vietnam, Bush didn’t consider losing an option in Iraq and Afghanistan. Losing is a bitter pill to swallow, and all of those wars were sold as being due to “existential threats” as well.
There’s a possibility that this war may bring down Putin and even the currently ruling United Russia party. Unless someone goes nuclear, “Russia” is in no danger of ceasing to exist for some time. It may lose some of its central Asian satrapies to more attractive proxy rulers in the near term, but it’s not likely to face invasion. Hopefully the current Russian ruling class won’t drag Ukraine out the way the US ruling class dragged Afghanistan out.
I believe it would be advantageous for the planet if we were brought down by this catastrophically dumb idea.
My personal viewpoint: in over 65 years of observation of the national scene, I have never seen as many dumb moves by any administration as I’ve seen vomited up by the Biden administration. It broadcasts all the signals of mental illness in the highest circles.
Please explain how Putin will do this. According to what headlines tell me Russia is losing this war badly and Putin’s military has been severely degraded. So, somehow, they will get strong enough to not only take the whole of Ukraine, and hold it, but also have enough resources left to be able to conquer yet another country?
A good point. It is called time. Putin wins say Eastern Ukraine, rebuilds and later goes after the next section.
And after that, the entirety of Europe, I’m guessing?
😂
Rebuilds with what? His economy is in tatters, his military is defeated and deserting en masse and he’s either dying or will be assassinated shortly. Right? Those are also things we have been told since the onset of the invasion and yet somehow Putin will still be able to be take the whole of Europe.
These things only seem contradictory to you, wars, because you don’t think like a true, patriotic, exceptional American. You might understand better if you’d limit your reading, listening and viewing to approved sources.
I trust McCarthy as much as I trust Pelosi. Will lie to get votes, them go back to MIC swamp business as usual.
That’s just another ploy to get GOP votes. If they do win, they will say they have ‘evolved’ (flip flopped) and the aid will happen. They won’t bite any hand that feeds them, even the ‘hand of glory.’
POLARIS 21, November 18 to December 3, 2021, a NATO exercise in the area west of the island of Corsica, between France and Spain. Journalists now have data related to the exercise which was advanced NATO preparation to start an armed conflict with the Russian Federation.
The NATO coalition would form and send an aircraft carrier strike group led by the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier to attack the Russian forces halting an expected Russian defense of the Donbass in Ukraine.
POLARIS 2021 was also a demonstration of NATO support for the coup imposed Nazi’s in Kyiv to start hostilities with the Donbass which would provide an excuse for NATO to intervene, NATO was setting up an attack on Russia.
The start of the Special Military Operation of the RF Armed Forces in Ukraine became the only possible response to the inevitable aggression of NATO. It was this intervention that is responsible for why there was not and will not be a conflict between Russia and NATO. A Third World War was prevented by the Russian special operation in Ukraine.
Some people are not so sure whether World War is prevented or not. Everything is just about to begin. So far, we are watching only the escalation.
No more money tree!
So the Kochtopus is to the left of AOC on this issue. Where are they now? Quite dead you know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_congressional_opponents_of_the_Vietnam_War
Republicans write checks with their mouths that their butts don’t cash.