House Republicans tout Ukraine oversight, brace for funding fight

WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders spotlighted Ukraine aid oversight in hearings Tuesday while pushing the Biden administration to deliver better equipment faster, even as they prepare for an intraparty clash with the right-flank of their caucus later this year over additional assistance for Kyiv.

Lawmakers used the hearings to grill Pentagon officials on their methodology for monitoring the influx of U.S. arms into Ukraine after Congress passed a cumulative $113 billion in military and economic assistance for Kyiv following Russia’s invasion last year. Defense Department officials testified that there has been no misuse of U.S. assistance but also revealed that they would need to ask Congress for additional Ukraine aid over the long haul.

“The subcommittee needs to hear what Ukraine’s critical needs are and how we can expedite delivery of equipment,” House defense spending panel Chairman Ken Calvert, R-Calif., said at the hearing he convened. “The subcommittee will not be writing blank checks. In order to receive funding, there should be a plan and the details required to justify the need for funding.

“Funding provided will be followed by rigorous oversight on the use of funds to ensure they are used as Congress intended,” he added. “American taxpayers deserve no less.”

Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl and Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Celeste Wallander both testified that there is no evidence that U.S. military equipment has been diverted from the front lines in Ukraine.

The Pentagon, State Department and USAID Inspectors General also released a multi-year joint strategic oversight plan in January, which House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., has endorsed.

Rogers noted at an Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday that “oversight is about more than just accounting,” continuing his push to convince the Biden administration to send Ukraine more advanced weaponry such as long-range missiles.

“It’s about ensuring the administration is setting strategic goals and implementing a policy to achieve them,” said Rogers. “This is where I have very real concerns. Since the beginning, the President has been overly worried that giving Ukraine what it needs to win would be too escalatory.”

‘Longer-term investments’

Congress provided the Defense Department with $61.4 billion in emergency military aid for Ukraine over four supplemental spending packages last year. The last package – attached to the government funding bill Congress passed in December – included $27.9 billion in additional Ukraine military aid, which the Biden administration hopes will last through the end of the fiscal year in September.

Wallander warned that the Biden administration may have to ask Congress for additional Ukraine funding before then and noted that “there is work ongoing” to build the heightened Ukraine assistance levels into the Defense Department base budget. The White House is expected to release its fiscal 2014 budget proposal on March 9. At the same time, she could not predict how much more military aid Ukraine would require over the next year.

“As we think about assessing at the end of the summer where the battlefield stands – what it looks like – because we’ll need to be thinking about these longer-term investments in a modern Ukrainian military,” Wallander said, warning that Moscow would use any potential ceasefire to prepare for another invasion attempt.

“I know it’s not the answer everyone wants to hear,” she added. “We’d like to think the Russian leadership will wake up and go home and leave Ukraine alone, but the indications are quite the opposite.”

With Congress likely to consider additional Ukraine spending before the end of the year – either through an emergency spending supplemental or the regular appropriations process – conservative skeptics of that assistance will have an opportunity to flex their new clout over House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

The second Ukraine aid supplemental passed Congress last May with 57 House Republicans voting against it . McCarthy – who voted for that package – made several concessions to those Ukraine aid skeptics to secure the votes to win his protracted speakership battle , including a House rules change that would allow any member to initiative a vote to remove him as speaker.

McCarthy has also agreed to $130 billion in discretionary spending cuts, further complicating matters if congressional leaders seek to add billions more in Ukraine funding through the regular appropriations process.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., fired the opening salvo in the next Ukraine funding battle last week, decrying the “the Biden administration and the idiots I work with in Congress that are leading us into World War III and going to hurt America like never before” in a Fox News interview. She re-introduced a resolution on Friday that would require President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary of Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to give Congress all documents related to Ukraine spending.

Taylor Greene used expedited House procedures to force a vote on similar legislation in December, but Democrats who controlled the House Foreign Affairs Committee at the time argued that it was overly broad and voted it down. Yet Republicans on the committee unanimously supported it, including Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, a Ukraine aid proponent who now chairs the panel.

Notably, some Republican hawks on the defense spending panel who have also supported Ukraine aid raised reservations at the Tuesday hearing about the war’s end goals and its potential length .

Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, for instance addressed the thorny question of whether the U.S. should support Ukraine’s ultimate goal of retaking Crimea by force.

“I’m afraid that our goals in general and President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy’s goals may not be aligned” said Stewart.

And Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Calif., referred to reports that China may provide weapons to Russia, arguing that “they can make it rain better than we can tread water in Ukraine.”

“I’m sitting here on [appropriations],” said Garcia. “I sit on [Intelligence], and I don’t know if this is a one-year problem, a six-month problem or a 10-year problem. And it’s tough for the American people to get behind something like that without definitive sell-off criteria.”

Bryant Harris is the Congress reporter for Defense News. He has covered U.S. foreign policy, national security, international affairs and politics in Washington since 2014. He has also written for Foreign Policy, Al-Monitor, Al Jazeera English and IPS News.

华盛顿——周二，众议院共和党领导人在听证会上重点关注了对乌克兰援助的监督，同时敦促拜登政府更快地提供更好的设备，尽管他们正准备在今年晚些时候与党内右翼就向基辅提供额外援助的问题发生党内冲突。

在国会通过总额达1130亿美元的军事和经济援助法案，向基辅提供援助以应对去年俄罗斯入侵乌克兰之后，议员们利用听证会质询了五角大楼官员，询问他们如何监控美国武器流入乌克兰。国防部官员作证称，美国援助没有被滥用，但也透露，从长远来看，他们需要向国会申请更多对乌克兰的援助。

“小组委员会需要了解乌克兰的迫切需求，以及我们如何才能加快装备交付，”众议院国防开支小组主席、加州共和党众议员肯·卡尔弗特在他召集的听证会上说。“小组委员会不会随意开支票。要想获得资金，就必须有计划，并提供必要的细节来证明资金的必要性。”

他补充说：“拨款到位后，我们将对资金使用情况进行严格监督，以确保资金按照国会的意愿使用。美国纳税人理应得到这样的保障。”

负责政策的国防部副部长科林·卡尔和负责国际安全事务的国防部助理部长塞莱斯特·瓦兰德都作证说，没有证据表明美国军事装备已从乌克兰前线转移。

五角大楼、国务院和美国国际开发署监察长于 1 月份发布了一项多年联合战略监督计划，该计划得到了众议院军事委员会主席、阿拉巴马州共和党众议员迈克·罗杰斯的认可。

罗杰斯周二在军事委员会听证会上指出，“监督不仅仅是问责”，他继续努力说服拜登政府向乌克兰提供更先进的武器，例如远程导弹。

罗杰斯说：“关键在于确保政府制定战略目标并实施相应的政策来实现这些目标。这正是我非常担忧的地方。从一开始，总统就过度担心给予乌克兰赢得战争所需的资源会导致局势过度升级。”

“长期投资”

去年，国会通过四项补充拨款法案，向国防部提供了614亿美元的紧急军事援助，用于援助乌克兰。最后一项拨款法案——作为国会去年12月通过的政府拨款法案的附件——包含了279亿美元的额外乌克兰军事援助，拜登政府希望这笔援助能够持续到今年9月财政年度结束。

瓦兰德警告说，拜登政府可能在此之前需要向国会申请额外的乌克兰援助资金，并指出“目前正在努力”将提高后的乌克兰援助水平纳入国防部基本预算。白宫预计将于3月9日公布2014财年预算提案。与此同时，她也无法预测乌克兰在未来一年还需要多少军事援助。

“当我们考虑在夏季结束时评估战场现状时——因为我们需要考虑对乌克兰现代化军队的长期投资，”瓦兰德说，并警告说，莫斯科将利用任何可能的停火来准备另一次入侵企图。

她补充说：“我知道这不是每个人都想听到的答案。我们都希望俄罗斯领导层能够醒悟过来，回家去，不再干涉乌克兰，但种种迹象表明，情况恰恰相反。”

由于国会很可能在年底前考虑增加对乌克兰的援助——无论是通过紧急支出补充还是常规拨款程序——对援助持怀疑态度的保守派人士将有机会向众议院议长、加州共和党人凯文·麦卡锡施展他们新的影响力。

去年五月，第二项乌克兰援助补充法案在国会获得通过，但有57名共和党众议员投了反对票。麦卡锡——他本人投了赞成票——为了赢得旷日持久的议长之争，向这些对乌克兰援助持怀疑态度的议员做出了多项让步，其中包括修改众议院规则，允许任何议员发起投票罢免他的议长职务。

麦卡锡还同意削减 1300 亿美元的自由支配支出，如果国会领导人试图通过常规拨款程序增加数十亿美元的乌克兰援助资金，这将使情况更加复杂。

上周，佐治亚州共和党众议员玛乔丽·泰勒·格林在接受福克斯新闻采访时，率先就乌克兰援助资金问题发起攻势。她谴责“拜登政府和我在国会共事的那些蠢货正把我们拖入第三次世界大战，并将对美国造成前所未有的伤害”。上周五，她再次提出一项决议，要求总统乔·拜登、国防部长劳埃德·奥斯汀和国务卿安东尼·布林肯向国会提交所有与乌克兰援助相关的文档。

泰勒·格林曾利用众议院的快速程序，在去年12月迫使就类似法案进行投票，但当时掌控众议院外交事务委员会的民主党人认为该法案范围过广，予以否决。然而，委员会中的共和党人却一致支持该法案，其中包括现任该委员会主席、来自德克萨斯州的共和党众议员迈克·麦考尔，他曾是乌克兰援助的支持者。

值得注意的是，国防开支委员会中一些支持援助乌克兰的共和党鹰派人士在周二的听证会上对战争的最终目标和可能的持续时间提出了保留意见。

例如，犹他州共和党众议员克里斯·斯图尔特就美国是否应该支持乌克兰最终以武力夺回克里米亚这一棘手问题发表了看法。

斯图尔特说：“我担心我们的总体目标与泽连斯基总统的目标可能并不一致。”

加州共和党众议员迈克·加西亚提到有报道称中国可能向俄罗斯提供武器，并辩称“他们下雨都比我们在乌克兰挣扎求生强”。

“我负责拨款，”加西亚说。“我负责情报工作，但我不知道这究竟是一年的问题、六个月的问题还是十年的问题。如果没有明确的出售标准，美国民众很难支持这样的项目。”

布莱恩特·哈里斯是《防务新闻》的国会记者。自2014年以来，他一直在华盛顿报道美国外交政策、国家安全、国际事务和政治。他还曾为《外交政策》、《Al-Monitor》、《半岛电视台英语频道》和IPS新闻撰稿。