White House: U.S. will be unable to give Ukraine weapons without new funding
The United States will be unable to provide Ukraine with new weapons if Congress does not allocate funding for such supplies. However, there is also good news, says the U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan at a briefing.
According to him, when the U.S. transfers weapons to Ukraine from its stocks a "drawdown package to Ukraine", the government takes the money allocated by Congress and buys new weapons instead of the transferred ones.
"When we run out of money to buy weapons to replace the weapons we're... not in a position to continue to supply weapons to Ukraine. We need Congress to support funding in a bipartisan manner. Because there is no way to bypass the simple arithmetic that, when there is no funding to provide weapons to Ukraine, we simply cannot continue to provide weapons to Ukraine," added the U.S. President's advisor.
According to Sullivan, Congress needs to "has got to step up and provide the funding" because "there's not a magical pot of money out there".
"Now, the good news is a very strong majority of both Democrats and Republicans support giving this aid. And so there is no earthly reason why it shouldn't be put to a vote in the House and the Senate. And if it were put to a vote in the House and the Senate, you'd see overwhelming bipartisan support for providing this funding," he added.
New funding for assistance to Ukraine
Recall that in October, U.S. President Joe Biden requested about $105 billion from Congress. The package includes over $61 billion in assistance to Ukraine, funding for assistance to Israel, and more.
Soon after, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, wanted to separate Ukraine and Israel into separate packages. He introduced a bill on separate aid to Israel for consideration by the House of Representatives, and it was supported.
However, in the Senate, they refused to even consider such an initiative, supporting Biden's proposal.
According to media reports, the president's initiative will be voted on in the upper house of Congress today, December 4.
At the same time, the money that the U.S. had earmarked for assistance to Ukraine earlier is running out.
