Florida Republican Rep. Byron Donalds on Tuesday insisted that their was neither the support nor the money to accommodate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's demands that the U.S. provide additional funding to fuel Kyiv's war effort against Russia.
"There's no money in the House right now for Ukraine. It's not there," he told The Recount, prompting the reporter to clarify whether he meant there existed no support for giving Ukraine additional aid.
"No. And to be blunt, we're running a $2 trillion deficit. Any money we give to Ukraine, we're borrowing from our future. That's the facts. Those are the truth," he said.
Zelensky is slated to address Congress this week to request additional funding for the war effort. Kyiv is currently several months into an ongoing counteroffensive effort that has fallen well short of its aims and foreign expectations.
"It’s not a good time for him to be here, quite frankly. That's just the reality," Donalds said of Zelensky's visit. He further attributed the ongoing conflict to the failings of Democratic leadership in Washington.
"What's happened with Ukraine is frankly the fault of leadership of Joe Biden. Let's be very clear on that," he said. "So don't put that on the backs of the American people. Now, if we had a commander-in-chief who knew how to lead as opposed to take naps, then we would be in a much better situation when it comes to Ukraine and global security for that matter."
House Republicans are currently engaged in tense negotiations over the approval of appropriations bills to fund the government and avert a shutdown. House conservatives have pushed Speaker Kevin McCarthy to support deeper spending cuts to address the mounting national debt.
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