A group of Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill are accusing President Joe Biden‘s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) of significantly underestimating the amount of aid sent to Ukraine. In a letter to Biden’s budget agency, Sens. J.D. Vance (R-OH), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Mike Lee (R-UT) — along with several other lawmakers — detail evidence suggesting the previous Ukraine aid estimate of $111 billion is off by at least $14 billion. They contend the actual cost of aid is closer to $125 billion and could even exceed $129 billion.
Sen. Vance and his colleagues also allege the Biden government has stonewalled their transparency efforts, making it increasingly difficult to determine the cost of U.S. aid packages sent to the Eastern European country. They note that their initial request for OMB to provide the cost of Ukraine aid took nearly eight months to fulfill — and even then, the agency only provided an incomplete data set.
“The deficiencies in OMB’s response were numerous,” the Senators wrote to the agency’s director, Shalanda Young, on Tuesday. They noted the OMB data did not include “base appropriations for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative” and “omitted the administration’s ‘$6.2 billion in ‘freed-up’ authority’ to send weapons to Ukraine.”
In May of last year, The National Pulse reported that the Biden government had changed its method for determining the value of military equipment in an effort to allow them to claim they were spending less than initially claimed on Ukraine. The Pentagon originally valued weapons in terms of their replacement costs. By moving to an accounting system where they valued weapons in terms of cost when they were purchased and depreciated, they have been able to argue military aid to Ukraine has been overvalued.
