On Thursday afternoon, the House voted on a bill originally proposed by John Cornyn (R-TX) in the Senate, S.3522-- Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act. It had passed unanimously in the Senate about 3 weeks ago. Yesterday, all 221 Democrats and 196 Republicans backed it. The only nay votes were from 10 extreme right crackpots:
Marjorie Traitor Greene (Q-GA)
Matt Gaetz (R-FL)
Andy Biggs (R-A)
Scott Perry (R-PA)
Paul Gosar (R-AZ)
Tom Tiffany (R-WI)
Warren Davidson (R-OH)
Thomas Massie (R-KY)
Dan Bishop (R-NC)
Ralph Norman (R-SC)
There were no surprises among those who voted "no," but some wondering about what spooked Lauren Boebert (Q-CO), Ronny Jackson (R-TX), Mary Miller (Q-IL) and North Carolina Nazi Madison Cawthorn to vote against the rest of the Gang Greene and support America for a change. We all knew Cawthorn was a Putin suck-up but everyone thought he was a straight cross-dresser until last night. Now... if it quacks like a duck as much as he does, he must be another GOP closet case caught on tape.
The NY Times reported that "The 417-to-10 vote to invoke an extraordinary, eight-decade-old law created to battle Hitler reflected a growing bipartisan sense of urgency in Congress to bolster the Ukrainian military as it digs in for an ugly and protracted artillery war in the south and east of the country. The Senate passed the legislation unanimously this month. 'Passage of that act enabled Great Britain and Winston Churchill to keep fighting and to survive the fascist Nazi bombardment until the United States could enter the war,' said Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland. 'President Zelensky has said that Ukraine needs weapons to sustain themselves, and President Biden has answered that call.' The legislation invokes the Lend-Lease Act of 1941, originally proposed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to help arm British forces battling Germany. The legislation allowed the president to lease or lend military equipment to any foreign government 'whose defense the president deems vital to the defense of the United States.'"
The new law will "allow the United States to deliver arms to Ukraine more speedily by doing away with a variety of procedural hurdles. And it would essentially allow the Biden administration to gift vast tranches of arms to Kyiv, at a time when Biden has said he has nearly exhausted the emergency military funding Congress approved in March." Yesterday, Biden asked Congress for $33 billion in additional military, economic and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine. "The funding, more than twice the size of the $13.6 billion package Congress passed last month, is projected to last for at least five months... Roughly half of that figure is expected to fund new military assistance."