After Republicans in the legislative chamber voted down an earlier bipartisan proposal updating border policy and setting up new security assistance for Ukraine, the Senate has approved a different arrangement that — if eventually enacted — sets up tens of billions of dollars worth of aid for the country, which continues fighting an extensive Russian invasion.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was among the Senate’s Republicans who registered opposition, arguing for further assistance for Ukraine to instead be formulated into a loan and complaining about failures to move border and immigration reform forward. He quickly drew extensive condemnation.
“Aside from the pathetic pandering to Trump, @LindseyGrahamSC knows full well that 80% of the Ukraine money will actually be spent in the U.S. and 50% will go directly to American companies,” Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), a first-term Congressman and current member of the House Oversight Committee, asserted. “A “loan” is not only a stupid idea but it’s also not feasible, which Graham well knows.”
Graham, in explaining his stance with a prepared statement, explicitly linked his arguments to comments from Trump.
Trump has maligned the rate at which the U.S. has assisted Ukraine in tandem with recent threats towards the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). (Ukraine is not a member of that alliance, and the assistance provided by the U.S. and its allies has most prominently been in the form of weapons deliveries.)
Trump suggested at a recent rally that he would encourage Russia to move militarily on NATO members who fell short of ostensible spending obligations, the nature of which Trump misrepresents. And Trump complained feverishly about a supposed gap between the amounts used by the U.S. to support Ukraine’s defense and what NATO members elsewhere have doled out.
“But now, without me there to say YOU MUST PAY, they are at it again. We are into helping Ukraine for more than 100 Billion Dollars more than NATO,” Trump claimed on his knock-off social media site Truth Social. Trump, meanwhile, clearly still holds sway over a large share of the House Republican Conference, which has been generally oppositional to some of the proposals around Ukraine assistance recently emerging in the Senate.
