The Biden administration has warned that billions of dollars allocated to Ukraine will expire at the end of this month unless Congress acts.
About 10% of the $61 billion Congress passed for Ukraine in April remains unspent, and the White House has asked Congress to extend the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) to allow aid to Ukraine beyond the Sept. 30 deadline.
“There is $5.9 billion remaining in Ukraine Presidential Withdrawal Authorization, of which all but $100 million will expire at the end of the fiscal year,” Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Friday.
“The Department will continue to offer withdrawal packages for the foreseeable future and is working with Congress to seek an extension of the PDA. [presidential drawdown] “The authorities' powers will extend beyond the end of the fiscal year,” he said.
The Biden administration has asked Congress to attach the extension of authority to a continuing resolution, a last-minute must-pass spending bill that is working to keep the government afloat and funded through fiscal year 2025. Administration officials have said they want to extend the authority for another year.
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The request frustrated Republican defense hawks, who argued that resources should not have been left over for Ukraine and that they should have been allocated ahead of the deadline.
“There should not be an extension requested. We had five months to spend this money,” Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Fox News Digital.
People stand near one of Ukraine's largest children's hospitals, which was partially destroyed in a Russian missile attack, in Kiev, July 8, 2024. (Oleksandr Gusev/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
“This is the latest example of the Biden-Harris Administration delaying aid to Ukraine as it fights for its survival,” the Republican senator said.
“Without asking Congress for a single cent of new funding, President Biden can, with a wave of his pen, change the course of the war in favor of our friends in Ukraine. Until then, our piecemeal approach to aiding Ukraine will continue to cost time and lives rather than make a meaningful difference on the battlefield.”
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Congress passed a $95 billion aid package in April, including $61 billion for Ukraine. The White House had wanted to allocate the funds last year, but divisions among House Republicans delayed the bill's passage.
The Pentagon maintains it is in talks with Congress to get approval to provide aid to Ukraine after the fiscal year ends, but Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the top official in charge of the funding package, said he has not received any communication from the White House on the matter.
“we [talked about extending drawdown authority]”Nobody from the White House has called me,” he said.
Ukrainian soldiers fire a self-propelled howitzer at Russian military positions near the town of Khasiv Yar in Ukraine's Donetsk region. (Oleg Petrasiuk/24th Mechanized Brigade of Ukraine via The Associated Press)
A congressional aide told Fox News Digital that “active discussions are underway with the committees regarding PDA authority in the CR.”
But Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana faced strong backlash and was forced from his position the last time he passed a Ukraine aid bill, and Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has filed a motion to remove the speaker and is seeking the support of 11 other Republicans to remove him from his position.
If Congress fails to extend the PDA, defense officials are considering other ways to use the money. They say there is $4 billion in long-term funding through the Ukraine Security Initiative that doesn't expire until September 2025. But that money goes to pay for weapons contracts that won't be delivered for more than a year.
Ryder explained that the Pentagon would be able to use its own budget to send military aid to Ukraine and reimburse the Pentagon for the weapons it sends.
The administration's request for more time to disburse funds to Ukraine is a stark difference from last winter, when it pleaded for more funding to the country.
The US regularly announces new cuts packages, sometimes two to three times a month, and officials told CNN that the delay in aid to Ukraine is due in part to a reluctance to pull from US stockpiles that could jeopardize the country's readiness.
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“We approved $61 billion. [for Ukraine]”The current weak president has squandered his authority to take that money and that weaponry and deliver it in a timely manner,” said Rep. Mark Alford (R-Mo.), a member of the Armed Services Committee. [President Volodymyr] Zelensky will actually win this war.”
“This is part of the administration's very stagnant view of this war. They don't trust the Ukrainians and they're afraid of an escalation of the war, even though we've blown up a lot of supposed wars.” [President Vladimir] “President Putin crossed a red line and the Russians didn't respond,” said a senior Republican congressional aide.
“The fighting remains intense. There was an implicit agreement between Congress and the Administration that we would provide some level and pace of assistance to Ukraine through 2024, and it is simply unacceptable that the Administration would withdraw from that.”
The roughly $6 billion allocated to Ukraine will be wasted unless spending authority is expanded. (Roman Pilipei/AFP via Getty Images)
“Anyone who has been to Ukraine recently knows how precarious the situation on the front line is,” a pro-Ukraine expert said. “Aid should have been delivered months ago and we should never have gotten into this situation in the first place. But [national security adviser Jake] Sullivan believes “escalation management” is possible.
The Republican-led House is scheduled to vote Wednesday on the CR bill, which would extend government funding to 2023 levels for six months, but which is widely opposed by both parties. Failure to pass it would force Republican leaders to scrap the plan. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has called on Johnson to work with him on a short-term bipartisan CR deal, but the Senate has yet to pass a spending agreement.
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Schumer is likely to prioritize extending the aid to Ukraine, but he was not available for comment on the matter. Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committee Chairs Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Jack Reed (D-Ind.) told Fox News Digital they support the move.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana, suggested such proposals would need to start in the Senate. “You can't have a deal if only one side has a proposal on the table,” he said. “The Senate needs to come up with a proposal quickly. Why wait until midnight to start working?”
