House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) defied the chaos agents in his own party as he allowed the House to approve $95 billion in US aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan in a special Saturday session April 20 that was a rare victory for bipartisanship.
The most controversial portion was $61 billion earmarked for embattled Ukraine. The MAGA Chaos Caucus, which protects the interests of Donald Trump and his mentor, Russian President Vladimir Putin, had stopped Johnson from allowing the House to approve the aid to rearm Ukraine, which has held Russian invaders at bay for more than two years, but had been running low on ammunition and interceptor missiles for Ukraine’s air-defense systems since the last major infusion from the US in December 2022.
President Joe Biden requested funding for Ukraine in October 2023, but the Chaos Caucus blocked the bill, demanding that any assistance for Ukraine be tied to policy changes at the US-Mexico border. Then MAGA rejected a bipartisan Senate deal on immigration reforms, on Trump’s instructions, reportedly because Trump wanted to keep stirring the “border crisis” through the election.
The Pentagon warned that, without an infusion of aid from the United States, Ukraine would continue losing territory to Russian military, which is preparing to start a spring offensive. The aid to Ukraine finally was approved on a 311-112 vote, with opposition from the right-wing members of the Chaos Caucus, who did not want to give President Biden a “win.” Trump has sakd he would settle the war by letting Russia keep the land it has seized.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) filed a “motion to vacate” March 22, which could remove Johnson from his post, after Johnson allowed the House to pass a spending package to avert a partial government shutdown just hours before the deadline. The funding had support from both sides of the aisle, but the Chaos Caucus really wanted to force a government shutdown.
Then, after Johnson agreed to allow the aid for Ukraine, Reps. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) joined Greene in the motion to vacate and urged Johnson to voluntarily step aside. Democrats might need to vote with moderate Republicans to keep Johnson in office, unless they can find three moderate Republicans to switch parties to elect Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries. If Dems can’t find three R’s who’ll switch, they should vote to keep Johnson in office, because Trump and the Chaos Caucus aren’t going to allow any more reasonable Republican to take his place.
MAGA Congress members who complain that money is being spent on defending Ukraine when there are needs in the US that go unmet are displaying the usual hypocrisy. The Center for American Progress in 2022 reported that the tax cuts enacted during the George W. Bush and Trump administrations slashed taxes disproportionately for the wealthy and profitable corporations, severely reducing federal revenues. Instead of paying for themselves by spurring economic growth, the tax cuts added $10 trillion to the nation’s debt.
And if Republicans extend the Trump tax cuts, which were enacted on a party-line vote in 2017 and expire in 2015, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported, the extended tax cuts would add $3.5 trillion to the deficit through 2033.
“MAGA Republicans don’t give a damn about the deficit, and today’s estimate of the cost of kickbacks for their friends and donors is further proof,” said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). “Republicans racked up the national debt by giving tax breaks to their billionaire buddies, and now they want everyone else to pay for them. It is one of life’s great enigmas that Republicans can keep a straight face while they simultaneously cite the deficit to extort massive spending cuts to critical programs and support a bill that would blow up deficits to extend trillions in tax cuts for the people who need them the least.”
The Kremlin reacted angrily to news that Congress was on track to approve an aid package for Ukraine, warning that it will lead to the “deaths of even more Ukrainians.”
The decision “will make the United States of America richer, further ruin Ukraine and result in the deaths of even more Ukrainians, the fault of the Kyiv regime,” Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said, in remarks reported by Russia’s state news agencies.
Activists on the far right and the far left in the US joined the MAGAts in urging the US to force Ukraine to settle a fight they cannot hope to win. War critics have been saying that ever since Putin sent in the invaders in February 2022, expecting Kyiv to fall in 72 hours. Then they said the “special military action” might take two months.
Two years later, Russia’s military death toll in Ukraine has passed 50,000, the BBC reported, relying on research by BBC’s Russian language service, independent media group Mediazona and volunteers who have been counting deaths since the invasion, monitoring new graves in cemeteries, open-source information from official reports, newspapers and social media.
More than 27,300 Russian soldiers died in the second year of combat — nearly 25% higher than the first year, the BBC reported — a reflection of how territorial gains have come at a huge human cost as Russian officers have used the “meat grinder” strategy to send waves of soldiers forward in frontal assaults to try to wear down Ukrainian forces and expose their locations to Russian artillery.
The overall Russian death toll of more than 50,000 is eight times higher than the only official public acknowledgement of fatality numbers ever given by Moscow in September 2022. Russia considers casualty figures a state secret.
Ukraine rarely comments on the scale of its battlefield fatalities. In February, President Volodymyr Zelensky said 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed — but US intelligence estimates suggest greater losses, the BBC reported.
Russia has made advances in Ukraine as the aid from the West has waned, and the Ukrainian defenders have had to count their remaining bullets. But the Pentagon says a massive military aid package is “ready to go” as soon as Congress acts and Biden signs off.
Russia, which has a population of 144 million, has around 1.1 million active troops across all branches. Ukraine, with a population of 37.9 million, claims one million in the military and has proposed mobilizing another 500,000 to step up the war with Russia.
Ukraine has shown they are up to the challenge of pushing the Russians back as long as the Ukraine defense forces have access the advanced weapons the US and other NATO members can furnish.
Ukraine doesn’t need American soldiers to join the fight, but if Ukraine defeats the Russians, that might end Putin’s further imperial ambitions. If Russia moves against NATO member states, such as Poland or the Baltic States, that could put American troops on the firing line. It’s still better to arm Ukrainian troops now. — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, May 15, 2024
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