White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Tuesday said the White House does not think aid to Ukraine in the form of a loan, as former President Donald Trump suggested, would be “the best way forward.”
“With respect to a loan to Ukraine, as I've said before, what we have requested and what the Senate passed on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis last week is both military assistance and economic assistance,” Sullivan told reporters on a call in which he urged the House to take up the foreign aid package that cleared the Senate last week.
“That economic assistance is in the form of grants, because asking Ukraine to take on and shoulder a substantial amount of debt right now, as it's fighting for its life, we don't regard that as the best way forward,” Sullivan continued.
Earlier this month, as the Senate looked to clear a multi-billion dollar package of foreign aid, Trump said that “from this point forward,” the U.S. should not be giving any funding to a foreign country that is not a loan.
Trump wrote in an all-caps post on his social media site Truth Social: “NO MONEY IN THE FORM OF FOREIGN AID SHOULD BE GIVEN TO ANY COUNTRY UNLESS IT IS DONE AS A LOAN, NOT JUST A GIVEAWAY. IT CAN BE LOANED ON EXTRAORDINARILY GOOD TERMS, LIKE NO INTEREST AND AN UNLIMITED LIFE, BUT A LOAN NEVERTHELESS.
He added: "THE DEAL SHOULD BE (CONTINGENT!) THAT THE U.S. IS HELPING YOU, AS A NATION, BUT IF THE COUNTRY WE ARE HELPING EVER TURNS AGAINST US, OR STRIKES IT RICH SOMETIME IN THE FUTURE, THE LOAN WILL BE PAID OFF AND THE MONEY RETURNED TO THE UNITED STATES.”
The U.S. sending additional aid to Ukraine has split the GOP for months as some Republicans argue the U.S. cannot afford to continue spending money on the conflict, the U.S. should focus on its own domestic issues and the Biden administration has not laid out a clear plan as to how the war ends.
In another sign of just how charged the issue has become, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who has previously supported assistance to Ukraine voted against the Senate’s bill last week, which included aid to Kyiv. In a statement on his vote, the South Carolina senator noted he backed Trump’s proposal of providing money as a loan.
“I believe the solution to this problem is the following formula: The supplemental aid package should be a loan to the countries in question, as suggested by President Trump,” Graham said. “A loan on friendly terms allows America, who is deeply in debt, a chance to get our money back and changes the paradigm of how we help others. President Trump is right to insist that we think outside the box.”
On Tuesday of last week, the Senate passed a $95 package providing aid to Ukraine amid Russia’s invasion, Israel as it battles Hamas, the Indo-Pacific as China exerts its influence in the region and more.
The GOP originally insisted the foreign aid must be tied to substantial border policy changes in order to get the party’s support – setting in motion months of arduous negotiations between a bipartisan group of senators and the White House. But the final product from those talks – an overhaul of border and asylum policies coupled with the foreign aid – was quickly shot down by enough Republicans to kill it, leading the Senate to drop the border provisions and move forward with just foreign assistance.
“We think that the package we put together and that Democratic and Republican senators voted for last week is the right package,” Sullivan said on Tuesday. “So, as far as I'm concerned, what we need to see from the House is that they move forward and pass this legislation, rather than have the United States negotiate against itself.”
Johnson has not committed to putting the package up for a vote as he has criticized it for not addressing the border, despite rejecting the Senate’s bipartisan immigration proposal.