President Joe Biden plans to stress the need for Congress to approve additional funding for Ukraine during a meeting at the White House with bipartisan leaders Wednesday afternoon as the deadline for funding the government nears.
Biden’s warning will, in part, lay out the potential setbacks that Ukraine could suffer on the battlefield in its ongoing fight against Russia without additional US aid, White House sources told CNN.
When he meets with congressional leaders in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Biden plans to walk through the impact that US aid has had on Ukraine’s battle against Russia over the last two years and warn about the “cost of inaction” as Russia continues airstrikes and counter-offensive, one of the sources said.
The White House has repeatedly said that the administration has exhausted its presidential drawdown authority funding, and stressed how crucial new funding is for Ukraine’s continued defense.
“Our last security assistance package was authorized on the 27th of December,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Tuesday. “We meant it when we said it at the time, that that was the last one for which we had replenishment authority.”
And while White House officials fully expect border policies – negotiations over which have complicated negotiations on the supplemental package – to come up in Wednesday’s meeting, sources said the plan heading into the gathering is for the president to try to stay largely focused on Ukraine.
Hours before the planned White House meeting, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell criticized Biden for not recognizing the flood of migrants at the southern border as a crisis.
“Over the weekend, President Biden once again refused to describe the situation at the southern border as a crisis. Apparently, according to the commander-in-chief, 10,000 border crossings in a day, and the busiest month and year on record at the border, is somehow not a crisis, ” he said.
But McConnell praised the bipartisan Senate border security negotiators for “making headway for the most significant border enhancements in almost 30 years. They are getting closer to delivering serious, lasting solutions to the unprecedented humanitarian and national security catastrophe that’s unfolding on President Biden’s watch.”
McConnell did not directly mention the White House meeting in his remarks on the Senate floor.
The White House has seen encouraging progress on border talks in recent days, a source said, and is hoping to use the meeting to press lawmakers to move quickly once an agreement is struck on the immigration portion of the supplemental package.
On the supplemental, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer conceded that coming to an agreement “is very complex” but added that members on both sides know that “we must do something on Ukraine. The eyes of history are upon this chamber.”
“It’s a matter of the highest national urgency that both parties keep working together to pass the supplemental,” he said. “President Biden has made clear that he’s willing to work with Republicans on border security. But as everyone knows, including Republican leadership, this has to be bipartisan.”
He added, “Any agreement on an issue is complex and contentious as the border is going to have to have support from both sides of the aisle. The work is done not done on the supplemental. But I remain very hopeful that negotiations continue heading in the right direction.”
Biden is set to meet with senior congressional leaders and the top members of key national security committees. The president is expected to be joined by a number of top aides on his national security team, one source said.
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