Republican Civil War Heats Up Over Ukraine Aid

Opposing GOP views on U.S. funding to Ukraine is setting up a showdown between Republicans in the House and Senate.

Congress is back in session from the August recess and a massive government spending bill will be the first order of business on the agenda. The GOP's more conservative members are preparing to threaten a government shutdown if their demands are not included on the spending measure, but their plans could end up putting them at odds with top Republican leaders.

House Republicans, like House Leader Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, have been clear that the White House request of $24 billion for military aid to Ukraine is a non-starter.

However, the provision is likely to make its way through the Democratic-controlled Senate, with the support of Republicans who want to pass President Joe Biden's full $40 billion supplemental spending request before the September 30 deadline.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made another push for Congress to pass more assistance to Ukraine on Wednesday, telling his colleagues from the floor that "it is certainly not the time to go wobbly" on sending more aid.

"Since [Russian President] Putin's escalation in Ukraine, President Biden has not been as decisive as many of us have preferred. But this is no excuse for Congress to compound his administration's failures with failures of our own," McConnell said.

Newsweek reached out to McCarthy via email for comment.

Sen. Lindsey Graham also told Punchbowl News on Thursday that halting Ukraine funding at this point of the war would essentially create "chaos in the world."

"It'd be disappointing," Sen. Thom Tillis said about leaving Ukraine out of the bill. "I think we should get them both done [disaster relief and Ukraine aid], because we're talking about a timeline where we have to send a signal that we're going to sustain Ukraine."

The spending package also includes $16 billion in disaster recovery efforts for communities devastated by hurricanes, storms and wildfires.

House Republicans, on the other hand, plan to leave the Ukraine funding out of the spending bill in order to consider it separately. Rep. Kevin Hern told CNN that the two should be split apart and that there needs to be more clarity about why Ukraine needs more U.S. funding.

"The president needs to come forward, or the speaker, leadership of the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, need to come together to share with the American people what we're doing, what's the outcome of this?" Hern said.

Since the war began in February 2022, Congress has passed $61.4 billion in military aid for Ukraine over four separate funding packages. Polls show that Americans are growing disillusioned about sending more money.

A CNN poll conducted in August found that Americans are now split on whether the U.S. has done enough to help Ukraine, with 51 percent answering yes and 48 percent saying the U.S. should do more. The figure is a significant shift in public opinion from the early days of the war, when 62 percent said they wanted the U.S. to do more.

The survey also showed a growing partisan divide between Republicans, who broadly oppose, 71 percent, any more Congressional authorization of funding, and Democrats, of whom the majority, 62 percent, favor additional funding.

But even with some public support, it's not only Senate Republicans who McCarthy will have to fend off, it will also involve pushing back on colleagues in his own chamber.

Republican Rep. Don Bacon, a McCarthy ally, has warned that the hardline approach to the spending bill is "not realistic."

"This theory that you gotta have 100 percent [of what you want], and if you don't get 100, you'll take zero—t's not that the way it works," Bacon told CNN. "And it's not good for the country."

The House Freedom Caucus has released a list of demands that includes opposition of any "blank check for Ukraine," a measure that addresses the "unprecedented weaponization of the Justice Department and FBI" and the inclusion of a sweeping GOP border bill that has stalled in the Senate.