Biden requests $33 billion for Ukraine, giving GOP another chance to show which side it's on
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President Joe Biden has officially made his request for the next tranche of aid to Ukraine, $33 billion in military and humanitarian aid for the next five months. In addition to the funding request, he is asking Congress to amend existing criminal laws to make seizing the assets of Russian oligarchs easier.
“The cost of this fight? It’s not cheap,” Biden said in announcing the request. “But caving to aggression is going to be more costly if we allow it to happen.”
The funding request includes $20.4 billion for security and military aid; $8.5 billion for economic support (food, energy, health care, and agriculture); and $3 billion in global food aid to offset the losses in Ukrainian production of wheat and other commodities. It also included $500 million for U.S. food production assistance. The request is expected to last through September, as good an indication as any that U.S. defense analysts expect a long slog for Ukraine against Russia. “As long as the assaults and atrocities continue, we’re going to continue to supply military assistance,” Biden said Thursday, indicating that this request is the beginning of a transition to longer-term security assistance for Ukraine.
“The president’s funding request is what we believe is needed to enable Ukraine’s success over the next five months of this war,” an administration official told reporters on a press call ahead of the official announcement from Biden. “And we have every expectation that our partners and allies … will continue to provide comparable levels of assistance going forward.”
Coupled with that funding request is a proposal to “establish new authorities for the forfeiture of property linked to Russian kleptocracy, allow the government to use the proceeds to support Ukraine, and further strengthen related law enforcement tools,” according to a White House fact sheet.
It would streamline the process of the seizure and forfeiture of sanctioned oligarchs assets as well as expand the U.S. assets they can grab, and then to use the proceeds to support Ukraine. “Under the proposal, the Departments of Justice, Treasury, and State will work together to use forfeited funds related to corruption, sanctions and export control violations, and other specified offenses to remediate harms of Russian aggression toward Ukraine.”
As current law stands, in order to sell off seized assets, prosecutors have to demonstrate that they are the proceeds of a crime, and being a sanctioned Russian isn’t a crime and theoretically, oligarchs could sue to get their stuff back. So the White House is pursuing legislation that would create a new criminal law, “making it unlawful for any person to knowingly or intentionally possess proceeds directly obtained from corrupt dealings with the Russian government.” That might make some elected Republicans sweat just a little bit.
While that request lands on Capitol Hill, the House will vote on the updated Lend-Lease Act that eliminates some restrictions on Biden’s ability to send military equipment to Ukraine and other countries in Eastern Europe under the World War II-era lend-lease program. It exempts the administration from the five-year limit on the duration of any loans or leases, and from the requirement that the countries getting the equipment pay all the costs. The Senate passed the bill earlier this month, before the Easter recess.
The House took a number of votes Wednesday aimed at punishing Russia and supporting surrounding countries and former Soviet Republics. That included one to “impose entry and property-blocking sanctions against foreign persons responsible for or complicit in serious human rights abuses in the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali Region/South Ossetia that are occupied by Russia,” which 20 Republicans voted against.
In addition, 17 Republicans voted no on a resolution “expressing support for Moldova’s democracy, independence, and territorial integrity and strengthening United States and Moldova relations, and 8 Republicans voted against a measure very similar to what Biden is requesting, to “seize assets belonging to a foreign person whose wealth is derived in part through political support for or corruption linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin.”
We’ll have a much better picture of just where Republicans stand—with or against Putin—when these bills come to the Senate.