Another congressional effort to provide Ukraine with billions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money is facing backlash from a growing group of Republican lawmakers.
After U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) spent hours on the Senate floor filibustering the $95 billion foreign aid package, a colleague from Ohio pointed out a provision within the proposed bill that could result in another impeachment attempt against former President Donald Trump if he is elected to serve a second term in the White House.
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) sent his fellow Senate Republicans a memo on Monday that outlined the potential ramifications of passing the bill, which includes funding that will not expire until nine months after the next presidential inauguration.
“The supplemental represents an attempt by the foreign policy blob/deep state to stop President Trump from pursuing his desired policy, and if he does so anyways, to provide grounds to impeach him and undermine his administration,” Vance wrote. “All Republicans should oppose its passage.”
He went on to argue that the language included in the bill could result in unnecessarily extending the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war since the next president could be impeached if he “were to withdraw from or pause financial support for the war in Ukraine in order to bring the conflict to a peaceful conclusion.”
In a social media post sharing his memo, Vance called the passage in question an “impeachment time bomb.”
I just sent the below memo to every one of my Republican colleagues in Congress.
Buried in the bill’s text is an impeachment time bomb for the next Trump presidency if he tries to stop funding the war in Ukraine.
We must vote against this disastrous bill. pic.twitter.com/uKqet9s0xd
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) February 12, 2024
The Ohio Republican went into greater detail about his opposition to the bill in a recent interview with former Trump administration adviser Steve Bannon, explaining that its supporters attempted to rush its passage before lawmakers had an opportunity to assess how the roughly $60 billion earmarked for Ukraine would be distributed.
“So it’s a loss from a policy perspective,” he said. “It’s a loss from a political perspective. And I have no idea why we’re doing it except for this: Senate leadership is obsessed, Steve, I mean, absolutely a borderline fetish with getting Ukraine money — and they’re willing to give away all of our leverage to get it.”
He described the proposal as the “worst piece of legislation” since he entered Congress, adding: “It is the single most important thing to kill in the U.S. Senate since I’ve been here.”
