Senate Republicans eager to ram Ukraine funding through the upper chamber are just as eager to dismiss their voters as dimwitted and “shortsighted.”
“Our base cannot possibly know what’s at stake at the level that any well-briefed U.S. senator should know about what’s at stake if Putin wins,” said North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, according to Punchbowl News Monday.
Senate lawmakers spent the weekend advancing another $61 billion to Kyiv following last week’s embarrassing rejection of a bipartisan compromise bill that threatened to codify the invasion on the southern border. The more than $95 billion foreign spending package headed for passage in the upper chamber sends money to Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel. If cleared, House Speaker Mike Johnson faces an uphill battle to split the bill with a narrow majority.
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According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Congress approved $113 billion for the proxy war against Russia in 2022. A November NBC News survey found just 35 percent of Republican voters support additional funds for Ukraine. Another poll from Gallup out the same month shows a plurality of Americans believe the U.S. is doing too much to prop up Kyiv, with skepticism surrounding new aid highest among Republicans. Providing an endless flow of taxpayer dollars to the war-torn eastern European nation, however, has remained a top priority for Senate Republican leadership.
On Sunday, GOP Senate chief Mitch McConnell of Kentucky slammed opposition to additional Ukraine aid as those with “the dimmest and most shortsighted views of our obligations.”
“I know it’s become quite fashionable in some circles to disregard the global interests we have as a global power,” McConnell said, according to Punchbowl.
“To bemoan the responsibilities of global leadership” and “lament the commitment that has underpinned the longest drought of great power conflict in human history,” McConnell added, “is idle work for idle minds.”
“It has no place in the United States Senate,” McConnell said.
Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee spent the weekend filibustering the latest aid package, which included a more than three-hour speech on Saturday.
“I think all of us would like to see Ukraine just win. We can’t wish it into existence. We can’t just dump enough money into it to make it happen,” Lee said. “On the contrary, economic aid by some measures, it is proving to be a colossal waste of money.”
