House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Congress will continue giving responsible aid to Ukraine, swiping at Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) comments that people don’t want to keep writing “blank checks” for the war effort against Russia.
Pelosi, without naming McCarthy directly, said support for Ukraine is a bipartisan issue in both the House and Senate during a press conference in Croatia with Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic. A number of Republicans have opposed continued aid to the war-torn country.
‘INAPPROPRIATE FOR US TO SPECULATE’: PENTAGON DOWNPLAYS MIDTERM IMPACT ON UKRAINE AID
“It wouldn’t be [like] someone made a statement of ‘We’re giving a blank check to Ukraine.’ We’ve never given a blank check to Ukraine. The Ukrainians have dealt with any assistance we have given them, and I’m sure you have given them, with great integrity, with great compliance, with great accountability, and with great transparency,” Pelosi told a reporter at the Monday remarks. “So the inference to be drawn from that is we will not be giving them the help — that’s not true — and that there’s been a blank check — that’s not true. This has been a relationship of great integrity for democracy and freedom throughout the world.”
McCarthy said last week that he doesn’t think voters facing an economic downturn will be supportive of spending more money for a war across the world.
“I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession, and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine,” McCarthy told Punchbowl News. “They just won’t do it.”
The comments exposed a rift in his own party, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) putting out a statement a few days later calling on the Biden administration to provide “quicker and more proactive” aid to Ukraine.
Top Intelligence Committee Republican Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), who returned from a trip last week in which he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, specified to reporters in a Monday phone briefing that Republicans do not oppose funding the war effort, only massive spending bills to which the funding is attached.
“The problem with Ukraine funding support in the House is not Ukraine. It’s all the things that are being attached to it that have nothing to do with Ukraine,” he said. “The end-of-year funding in Washington is going to be the wild, Wild West of spending, especially if the Republicans win the House.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Turner outlined that in a $40 billion spending bill, $8 billion made it to Ukraine because “that’s the way that Nancy Pelosi does business.”
Republicans are largely expected to take control of the House after the midterm elections on Nov. 8, which will likely result in a flurry of spending on Democratic priorities in the lame-duck session between the election and when the new Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3.
