Biden Announces $5.9B for Ukraine Aid

This is likely the last round of support for Ukraine that will come through before President Biden leaves office. Now all of this money was already congressionally appropriated. Right. Of course you'll recall back in April when Congress passed that large supplemental security assistance package after what was months of negotiations. And ultimately one of the people that was keeping those negotiations stalled was then senator and now vice president elect J.D. Vance who had historically been one of the staunchest opponents to Ukraine aid while he was in the Senate. Now during those stalled negotiations I actually had the chance to catch up with him and asked him about his reasoning behind his opposition. We're actually sending weapons to Ukraine so fast it's eliminating our ability to plan for a contingency in East Asia and the Middle East or something else that would affect our own national security. So it's good to make more American weapons with American workers and in American factories. It's bad to send them overseas at a faster rate than you're actually building them. Right. So he's talking about their what's known as revitalizing the defense industrial base. There's actually a bipartisan push to do so. But how that gets done and where the weapons ultimately go is where people start to differ. But the Pentagon has said that this is a huge priority for them. For example just this year they invested more than five billion dollars into U.S. factories who are ramping up the ammunition that we are sending to Ukraine. So we're kind of looking at this and what Vance has said previously about how the Trump administration might tackle this issue going forward. But Joe on a broader level I actually had the chance to catch up with some senior Army officials this year. I sat down with the U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Randy George the highest ranking military officer in the Army and he told me that revitalizing the defense industrial base getting equipment made faster and out the door is a huge priority going forward. We're changing how we train and how we operate. We're changing how we're organized. And what we've learned is we have to change how we buy things and especially in the rapid you know the areas where technology is moving very rapidly. So when it comes to this week's aid package for Ukraine includes two point five billion in security assistance the White House says that money will bolster long term air defense supplies and other critical weapons systems. There's also three point four billion dollars tied in there and what's known as direct budget support. That was announced by the Treasury and will go towards economic assistance for Ukraine. Now Joe since Russia invaded in February of 2022 the U.S. has provided more than 65 billion dollars in security assistance according to the Pentagon. And we know that President Trump has said that he would like to see an end to this conflict. But the details on how that deal would come through and what that means for additional security assistance remains to be seen.