Indo-Pacific Bill Could Allow Biden to Send More Weapons to Israel, Ukraine: Lawmakers

A new bill intended to help counter China’s communist regime in the Indo-Pacific could allow the Biden administration to effectively send an additional $4 billion in weapons to Ukraine, Israel, or elsewhere.

Some lawmakers are furious, however, that the bill also contained a provision that could allow President Joe Biden to send billions of dollars worth of weapons to ongoing wars in Europe and the Middle East.

Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) described the supplemental funding bill as “a Ukraine spending bill disguised as Taiwan aid.”

“I am concerned that by tying the Taiwan bill to past Ukraine loan funding, Congress is greenlighting the Biden Administration to redirect this funding to Ukraine,” Ms. Hageman told The Epoch Times in an email.

“This undermines the intent of the bill and sends more dollars to a war effort in Ukraine where there is no strategy or end goal, and little to no oversight of where U.S. assistance is going and how it is being used.”

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Ms. Hageman is one of 34 Republicans who voted against the bill, largely because of the inclusion of a clause wholly unrelated to the Indo-Pacific.

That clause amends the 2022 Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Act by doubling the loan amount available to the president for foreign military financing from $4 billion to $8 billion. Ms. Hageman believes it will be used as a back door to funnel billions of dollars to Ukraine.

The increased loan cap for foreign military financing does not necessarily mean that more weapons will be shipped. If President Biden does use the new authorities, however, he will have much greater flexibility in deciding how to exercise them.

Stephen Semler, co-founder of the Security Policy Reform Institute think tank, said that the clause effectively grants the president much greater leeway in deciding how to distribute weapons overseas.

“That specific provision doesn’t add any new funding. It only increases the limit on the value of weapons Biden can loan to countries using existing funds,” Mr. Semler told the Epoch Times in an email.

“There’s no guarantee that this loan authority will be used; FMF funds could be spent how they normally are, but if Biden decides to use it, this bill gives him an immense amount of latitude in terms of distributing U.S. armament worldwide.”

To that end, Mr. Semler pointed to the second part of the clause, which also expands the countries eligible to receive that foreign military assistance.

Whereas the original Ukraine supplemental only allowed the weapons to be delivered to Ukraine or the United States’s 32 NATO allies, the newly amended bill also allows the president to send arms to all 18 “major non-NATO allies” and the entire 38 nations of the “Indo-Pacific region.”

“Effectively, it expands the number of eligible recipient countries from 32 to 88, a 56-state increase,” Mr. Semler said.

Thus, while some Republicans are furious that the president could send more weapons to Ukraine, Mr. Semler says that the real danger is Congress’s willingness to support the administration’s continued entanglement in foreign conflicts.

“As far as how this fits with the administration’s disposition toward overseas conflicts, I can’t really say because I’m not sure to what extent the authority will be used. But it does indicate that Congress is not interested in diverting or slowing down the trajectory Biden has the U.S. on, which is creeping closer to conflict in the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe,” Mr. Semler wrote in the email.

“It’s part of a familiar pattern: The U.S. president demonstrates immoral or thick-headed policy choices abroad without congressional approval, Congress complains, but then passes legislation that enables the president to double-down on those bad policies,” he added.

Regardless of how or if the increase in available foreign military assistance is used, the inclusion of such a clause has already soured many China hawks away from the Biden-supported legislation.

Among those lawmakers is Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.), who has previously sponsored legislation promoting Taiwan’s statehood and urging an end to China’s favored trade status.

“While I have long supported expanded diplomatic and military ties with Taiwan, the package failed to prioritize fulfilling weapons orders that Taiwan has already paid for,” Mr. Tiffany told The Epoch Times in an email.

“I am also concerned that the Foreign Military Financing pool in the bill could be siphoned off for countries far from the Indo-Pacific region, like Ukraine.”

Similarly, Rep. Anna Luna (R-Fla.) said that the inclusion of the Ukraine clause in the bill undermined its stated goal of promoting security in the Indo-Pacific.

“The aid supplemental should have been a clean bill with funds explicitly aimed at the Indo-Pacific,” Ms. Luna told The Epoch Times.

“House leadership performed legislative gymnastics to pass these filthy bills with many hidden provisions. One such massive provision is in the Indo-Pacific bill that allows billions of dollars mainly supposed to go to Taiwan to be diverted to Ukraine—in addition to the over $60 billion we are already sending Ukraine on their aid supplement.”