“Get it to my desk in the next few days,” Biden said in a statement.
But he said on Monday that congressional leaders told him to decouple the effort in order to quicken the aid to Ukraine. Biden initially requested $33 billion to help Ukraine as it fights Russia, but Congress has proposed billions more for food aid and military equipment.
“We cannot afford delay in this vital war effort,” Biden said in the statement. “Hence, I am prepared to accept that these two measures move separately, so that the Ukrainian aid bill can get to my desk right away.”
Democrats are now expected to consider the Ukraine aid package in the House as soon as Tuesday and Covid-19 relief later.
Senate Republicans had insisted on the two issues moving on separate legislative tracks. In April, Senate Republicans blocked an effort to take up a $10 billion Covid relief bill over demands for votes on amendments, including one targeting the Biden administration’s decision to lift a Trump-era order known as Title 42, which allowed US border officials to turn migrants back to Mexico or their home countries immediately because of the public health crisis.
South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the number two Senate Republican, said that the Senate could consider both packages next week.
Thune said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has signaled he’s open to allowing an amendment vote on the Title 42 provision, paving the way to take up the $10 billion Covid-19 relief bill. A Schumer spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Thune said the Covid-19 bill “is going to be considered a different time.”
“I’m hearing now that Schumer is open to a Title 42 amendment, which perhaps, maybe tees that vote up at some point,” Thune added.
The White House did not want the Ukraine package bogged down in Congress even though Democrats had been pushing to tie the two together over fears that Republicans would set back the US response to the pandemic.
In Monday’s statement, Biden wrote he was “pleased” that “there appears to be strong support” from a bipartisan majority in Congress to provide aid to Ukraine.
But he again stressed the importance of spending even more resources addressing the pandemic. The administration recently projected that the US could potentially see 100 million Covid-19 infections this fall and winter.
“As vital as it is to help Ukraine combat Russian aggression, it is equally vital to help Americans combat COVID,” Biden said.
“Without timely COVID funding, more Americans will die needlessly,” he added. “We will lose our place in line for America to order new COVID treatments and vaccines for the fall, including next-generation vaccines under development, and be unable to maintain our supply of COVID tests.”
This story has been updated with additional developments Monday.
CNN’s Clare Foran and Kristin Wilson contributed to this report.
President Biden signed into law on Monday afternoon a bill that willexpedite the process of sending military aid to Ukraine, as the Eastern European country presses into its third month of fighting off a Russian invasion.
Flanked by Vice President Harris and members of Congress from both sides of the aisle, Biden vowed the United States will continue to support Ukraine “in their fight to defend their country and their democracy” against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war.
“Every day Ukrainians fight for their lives,” Biden said. “The cost of the fight is not cheap, but caving to aggression is even more costly.”
After signing the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022 into law, Biden handed his pen to Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.), the first Ukrainian-born member of Congress. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) also joined Biden in the Oval Office for the bill signing.
The House passed the lend-lease billlast month on a 417-to-10 vote. Only a few weeks before, the Senate had passed it unanimously, a rare and overwhelming show of bipartisanship in today’s bitterly divided Congress.
The measure, introduced by a bipartisan group of senators, updates a 1941 law the United States used to help its allies during World War II. Now that thebill is signed into law, the United States will be able to more quickly provide equipment and other supplies to Ukraine during the ongoing Russian invasion, as the bill enhances Biden’s authority to expedite agreements with Ukraine and other Eastern European countries.
After the House passed the bill on April 28, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) harked back to the lend-lease program that President Franklin D. Roosevelt started with allied countries in 1941, which she said turned the tide of World War II.
“In his 1941 State of the Union address, President Roosevelt explained that democracy itself, democracy itself was under … dire threat, not only in Europe, but around the world,” Pelosi said then. “And he called on Congress to lend a hand to our allies overseas: bolstering their defenses so they can defeat the evils of fascism.”
A couple of months later, Congress passed the original lend-lease program, which dramatically reduced bureaucratic roadblocks to allow the United States to resupply its allies more quickly.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was an echo of that chapter in history, Pelosi added in her remarks last month.
“The Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022 revives this pivotal program, waiving time-consuming requirements on the president’s authority to send critical defensive resources to Ukraine,” she said. “It’s important to note that it’s about time. Time is very important when lives are at stake.”
First lady Jill Biden visited Ukraine on May 8 to call for an end to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Video: The Washington Post)
The 10 Republicans who voted against the bipartisan measure were Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Dan Bishop (N.C.), Warren Davidson (Ohio), Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Paul A. Gosar (Ariz.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Thomas Massie (Ky.), Ralph Norman (S.C.), Scott Perry (Pa.) and Tom Tiffany (Wis.).
The weekend after the House passed the measure, Pelosi made a surprise visit to Kyiv, leading a small Democratic delegation to reaffirm U.S. support for Ukraine. There, they met with President Volodymyr Zelensky, who thanked the United States for “helping to protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of his country.
Over Mother’s Day weekend, first lady Jill Biden also made an unannounced visit to Ukraine, meeting with Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska in Uzhhorod, a city that lies on the border with Slovakia.
Biden on Monday noted that he was signing the lend-lease bill into law the day after V-E Day, which marked the end of World War II in Europe, and on the anniversary of the effort at European integration that produced the European Union.
“It’s something that is good for everyone,” Biden said Monday.
President Biden on April 28 proposed legislation for the United States to provide additional funding to support Ukraine in its defense from Russia’s invasion. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
The lend-lease bill is separate from Biden’s request for Congress to approve an additional $33 billion in security, economic and humanitarian assistance to the Ukrainian government. The president has argued that it is critical for the United States to continue providing resources to help Ukraine defend against Russia,and on Monday he again urged Congress to move swiftly.
“The plan was substantial in size, because the need is substantial: we must stand by Ukraine as it defends itself from Russian aggression,” Biden said in a statement. “The need is also urgent: I have nearly exhausted the resources given to me by a bipartisan majority in Congress to support Ukraine’s fighters. This aid has been critical to Ukraine’s success on the battlefield. We cannot allow our shipments of assistance to stop while we await further Congressional action.”
Biden has repeatedly emphasized that the United States will not send troops into Ukraine to fight but said that his administration will do everything possible to hold Russia accountable and that the United States will continue to supply military assistance to Ukraine as long as Russia continues its assault.
With the House and the Senate back in session, Congress could act on approving the extra $33 billion in aid to Ukraine in the coming weeks.
UZHHOROD, Ukraine — First lady Jill Biden crossed the border into Ukraine on Sunday, entering an active war zone in a rare move for the spouse of a sitting president.
Biden entered the country on Mother’s Day from Slovakia after she visited a processing center at the Vysne Nemecke border crossing and met with refugees. Inside Ukraine, she met with Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska, who had not appeared in public since the Russian invasion on Feb. 24.
“I wanted to come on Mother’s Day,” Biden said before the start of a closed-door meeting between the two first ladies. “I thought it was important to show the Ukrainian people that this war has to stop and this war has been brutal and that the people of the United States stand with the people of Ukraine.”
Zelenska praised Biden “for a very courageous act” in coming to Ukraine.
“We understand what it takes for the U.S. first lady to come here during a war when the military actions are taking place every day, where the air sirens are happening every day, even today,” she said in Ukrainian through an interpreter.
The unannounced Biden visit came amid a four-day swing through Eastern Europe for the first lady — her highest-profile diplomatic engagement since President Biden took office. She entered Ukraine the day before Russia’s Victory Day, which some officials worry will bring a new, more violent, phase of the war.
Previous first ladies have made overseas visits to support U.S. troops stationed abroad, but few have visited an active war zone on their own. In 2005, Laura Bush traveled solo to Kabul, where she met with women who were training to be teachers and gave presents to Afghan children on the street. Bush returned to Afghanistan in 2008.
Jill Biden’s trip to this region comes at a high-stakes moment in American foreign policy, as the United States plays a leading role in the military conflict and global humanitarian response. The invasion marks the moment of highest U.S.-Russia tension since the end of the Cold War.
Biden and Zelenska have exchanged correspondence in the last few weeks, a U.S. official said.
At a school here in Uzhhorod, the two women entered a classroom and sat down at a table with children working on art projects for their mothers. The children were crafting cardboard and tissue paper bears, which represent the symbol of the Zakarpattia oblast.
Biden’s trip to Ukraine follows two high-profile visits from American leaders in recent weeks. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) led a congressional delegation to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky late last month, following a trip by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
President Biden has not traveled to Ukraine since the war began, with aides privately citing the security challenges that a visit would pose. In March, he visited Rzeszow, Poland, which is about 60 miles from the Ukrainian border.
Biden and other Group of Seven leaders were scheduled to hold a video call with Zelensky later on Sunday. A White House official said the leaders planned to discuss Russia’s ongoing invasion and how the G-7 countries could continue to support Ukraine and levy costs on Moscow.
Before crossing the border, Jill Biden visited a bus station in Kosice, Slovakia, where local officials and nongovernmental organizations have set up a refugee processing center. Biden heard emotional stories from refugees who fled Ukraine but expressed a strong desire to return to their home country.
Victoria Kutocha, a mother of three whose husband remained in Ukraine to fight in the military, told Biden of her journey to Slovakia and her outrage at Russia’s explanation for its invasion.
“They come to our land,” she told Biden. “They kill us, but they say we protect you.”
Hugging her 7-year-old daughter, Yulie, Kutocha described the difficulty of explaining to her children why they had to leave their home. “It’s impossible,” she said. “I try to keep them safe. It’s my mission.”
“It’s senseless,” Biden said.
Biden began her trip in Romania, where she met troops at the Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base and visited a school in Bucharest hosting Ukrainian children. Biden will return to Bratislava, Slovakia, on Sunday night, and on Monday she is slated to meet with Slovakian President Zuzana Caputova.
U.S. President Joe Biden enters the Rose Garden during a ceremony at the White House in Washington, U.S., March 29, 2022. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
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WASHINGTON, May 6 (Reuters) – President Joe Biden is expected to sign a new weapons package worth at least $100 million for Ukraine as soon as later on Friday, four U.S. officials told Reuters, the latest in a series of transfers to help Kyiv repel Russia’s invasion.
The United States has rushed $3.4 billion worth of armaments to Ukraine since Russia invaded on Feb. 24, including howitzers, anti-aircraft Stinger systems, anti-tank Javelin missiles, ammunition and recently-disclosed “Ghost” drones.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the latest package would likely include more munitions for systems such as the howitzers. The Pentagon says it has already sent about 184,000 artillery rounds.
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The announcement could come as early as within the next 24 hours, two of the officials said.
The new tranche of weapons transfers would come from the remaining $250 million in the Presidential Drawdown Authority, which allows the president to authorize the transfer of excess weapons from U.S. stocks without congressional approval in response to an emergency.
Last month Biden proposed a $33 billion assistance package for Ukraine, including more than $20 billion in military aid.
The United States has been training some Ukrainian forces on how to use systems like the howitzers, outside Ukraine.
Group of Seven (G7) leaders including Biden will hold a video call on Sunday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a show of unity the day before Russia marks its Victory Day holiday, the White House said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin casts the war in Ukraine as a battle to protect Russian speakers there from persecution by Nazis and to guard against what he calls the U.S. threat to Russia posed by NATO enlargement.
Ukraine and the West reject the fascism claim as baseless and say Putin is waging an unprovoked war of aggression.
Ukraine and its allies say that after failing to seize the capital, Kyiv, Russian forces have made slow progress in their goal of capturing the country’s east and south but bombardments have affected more and more civilians.
Russia denies the allegations and says it targets only military or strategic sites, not civilians.
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Reporting by Idrees Ali, Patricia Zengerle and Mike Stone; Additional reporting by Steve Holland and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Diane Craft and Daniel Wallis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
WASHINGTON—Top U.S. regulators proposed overhauling how banks lend hundreds of billions of dollars annually in lower-income communities, after scrapping a Trump-era revamp that had divided regulators and industry officials.
The latest proposal to modernize rules for the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, announced Thursday, aims to ensure lending to lower-income individuals and small businesses is distributed more evenly where banks do business. Existing rules focus on bank activities around their physical branches. Those rules are outdated in a world in which much financial activity happens online, both bankers and community advocates say.
“Today’s proposal seeks to expand access to credit, investment, and banking services in [low- and middle-income] communities,” said incoming Federal Reserve Vice Chairwoman
Lael Brainard,
in a written statement. The Fed is one of three regulators rewriting the lending rules.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Wednesday the central bank approved a half-percentage-point interest-rate increase in an effort to reduce inflation that is running at a four-decade high. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
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The proposed revamp comes at a time when the Democratic Biden administration has pledged to do more to address disparities in wealth, incomes and access to financial services among Black Americans and other racial minority groups.
The Community Reinvestment Act is designed to end “redlining”—banks’ historical practice of avoiding lending in certain areas, often lower-income communities, frequently leading to stark economic disparities along racial lines. The law is one of the major tools the government uses to encourage banks to lend more to low- and moderate-income communities.
In recent years, the law has become a source of conflict between community groups that want the rules to be enforced more strongly and bankers who argue the regulations are too bureaucratic and haven’t kept up with technological changes, among other criticisms. Banks are typically examined every three years on their
CRA
efforts. A bad grade effectively prohibits mergers.
Thursday’s proposal, released Thursday by the Federal Reserve and two other banking regulators, aims to make rules more transparent and objective, potentially making it easier for banks to understand their regulatory requirements, though the firms could face heightened reporting mandates.
Under existing rules, banks must lend to lower-income communities in the area around their offices, even though they now accept deposits and make loans around the country via online accounts. This has led to a glut of reinvestment act spending in places such as Salt Lake City, where dozens of banks are headquartered but have no branches elsewhere.
If Thursday’s plan is finalized in the coming months, it would aim to spread online banks’ related activities nationally. Banks would be assessed for the CRA obligations even in areas where they don’t have physical offices, if they make a certain number of loans in a particular area.
In addition to the Fed, two other top bank regulators, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. signed on to the proposal Thursday. All three bank regulators are charged with overseeing the 1977 law and pledged last year to move jointly to modernize their rules. Regulators will collect public comment on the proposal through Aug. 5 before it can be finalized.
Thursday’s proposal comes after the OCC, which oversees national banks and the bulk of the activity under the low-income lending rules, in December rescinded Trump administration rule changes before banks were required to comply. That plan came from former Comptroller
Joseph Otting,
an appointee of former Republican President
Donald Trump,
and wasn’t supported by the Fed and the FDIC.
Incoming Fed Vice Chairwoman Lael Brainard is critical of a plan by the Trump administration that was later rescinded by President Biden.
Photo:
Al Drago/Bloomberg News
Fed officials, led by Ms. Brainard, said the 2020 OCC plan was rushed and could inadvertently decrease lending to lower-income areas. Ms. Brainard, a Fed governor since 2014, led a competing Fed effort to rewrite its CRA rules while central bank officials pledged to work with the other banking agencies on a unified set of new standards.
Though the Fed approved Thursday’s proposal unanimously, Fed governor
Michelle Bowman,
appointed by Mr. Trump, said in a statement that it remained unclear if overhaul’s costs will be greater than its benefits. She asked community banks to comment on whether the proposal would result in more or better investments.
“While I support issuing the proposed rule for public comment, there are significant unanswered issues posed by the proposal,” she said.
At present, banks are evaluated on compliance with the act based on a complex formula that includes loans to home buyers and small businesses, as well as the number of branches in lower-income areas. Most banks get passing grades on their CRA examinations.
The Consumer Bankers Association said ahead of the proposal that it welcomed regulators modernizing rules that haven’t been updated in over two decades, since before the widespread adoption of smartphones and mobile banking. “For decades, banks have invested trillions of dollars into underserved communities,” said
Richard Hunt,
the industry group’s president and chief executive, in a written statement. The association hopes the plan “provides the clarity, certainty, and flexibility banks need.”
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Consumer advocates said they hoped the proposal would boost banks’ obligations under the law. “The impact will be pretty clearly to raise the bar in terms of what’s expected from banks,” said Jesse Van Tol, president and chief executive of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a fair-lending advocacy group.
Mr. Van Tol said there is a major gap in one aspect of the proposal: It wouldn’t apply to the nonbank financial firms that now provide the bulk of the consumer loans in the U.S., such as in the mortgage market. Nonbanks originated about 75.5% of government-backed home loans as of March 2022, according to the Urban Institute.
Although some states like Illinois and New York have implemented their own reinvestment requirements that apply to nonbanks, Congress would need to act to expand federal requirements. Last year, Fed Chairman
Jerome Powell
suggested Congress should extend the rules to cover all firms providing consumer credit, not just banks.
“Like activities should have like regulation,” Mr. Powell said last May.
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Nonbank mortgage lenders say expanding CRA to cover their firms would be a mistake, arguing they have different business models that don’t involve taking deposits that are then reinvested into their communities.
“The Community Reinvestment Act for independent mortgage bankers is nonsensical and a solution in search of a problem,” said Robert Broeksmit, president and chief executive of the Mortgage Bankers Association.
Write to Andrew Ackerman at andrew.ackerman@wsj.com
Washington — President Biden highlighted deficit reduction in remarks Wednesday at the White House, noting that the government will pay down the national debt this quarter for the first time in six years.
Mr. Biden emphasized how strong job gains have increased total incomes and led to additional tax revenues that have improved the government’s balance sheet.
Besides the quarterly reduction in the national debt, the Treasury Department estimates that this fiscal year’s budget deficit will decline $1.5 trillion. That decrease marks an improvement from initial forecasts and would likely put the annual deficit below $1.3 trillion.
“The bottom line is that the deficit went up every year under my predecessor before the pandemic and during the pandemic. And it’s gone down both years since I’ve been here. Period,” he said.
The Democratic president has placed renewed emphasis on deficit reduction going into the midterm election, with administration officials saying that the burst of $1.9 trillion in coronavirus relief approved in 2021 has already paid off in the form of faster growth that now makes it easier to stabilize government finances.
Deficit reduction also matches a priority of Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the key Democratic vote in the evenly split Senate who blocked the passage of Mr. Biden’s domestic and environmental agenda in December. The reduction also occurs amid rising interest rates on U.S. Treasury notes, a consequence of inflation running at a 40-year peak and the Federal Reserve’s efforts to reduce price pressures.
It is unclear if greater fiscal responsibility can deliver politically for Mr. Biden as Democrats try to defend control of Congress. His two most recent Democratic predecessors, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, also cut budget deficits, only to leave office and see their Republican successors use the savings on tax cuts.
Still, Mr. Biden drew a sharp contrast with former President Donald Trump, whom he beat in 2020. Trump, among a multitude of promises, pledged to lower the national debt yet failed to do so during any financial quarter of his presidency. Mr. Biden has repeatedly taken aim at that broken promise.
Earlier this week, Treasury said that it expects to pay down $26 billion in privately held debt from the April to June quarter this year. However, the hope to reduce the debt may be dampened by Treasury’s expectation to borrow $182 billion in privately held debt from July to September.
When unveiling his budget plan in March, Mr. Biden said that after his Republican predecessor’s “fiscal mismanagement” his administration is “reducing the Trump deficits and returning our fiscal house to order.”
One of the challenges for Mr. Biden is that voters have largely shrugged off deficit increases and seldom rewarded deficit cuts. Voters might discuss the idea of reducing deficits with pollsters, yet health care, incomes and inflation are often top of mind when casting their ballots.
Norman Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, noted that deficits are often “abstract” for voters. The recent low interest rates have also muted any potential economic drags from higher deficits, which have risen following the COVID-19 pandemic and, separately, the 2008 financial crisis, to help the economy recover.
“They’re more likely to respond to things that are in their wheelhouse or that they believe will have a more direct effect on their lives,” Ornstein said. Deficits are “a step removed for most voters, and we’ve been through periods where we’ve had the big deficits and debt and it’s not like it devastated directly people’s lives.”
It is day 70 of Putin’s war in Ukraine, but at least in Russia, the war isn’t official just yet—Russian leadership has continued to tout the invasion as a “special military operation.”
But that might all change on Victory Day, the day Russia celebrates the Soviet Union’s victory in World War II. Russian President Vladimir Putin is preparing to declare war against Ukraine on Victory Day, May 9, western and Ukrainian officials believe.
Putin will be declaring a full mobilization for war on May 9, Ukraine’s top military spy, Kyrylo Budanov, predicted this week. U.S. officials are also warning that Russia could declare war as soon as May 9, CNN reported.
Some senior U.S. officials fear Putin will massively escalate attacks on Ukraine in the coming days. Senior Biden administration officials are growing increasingly concerned that Putin is growing desperate to declare any sort of win in Ukraine as Victory Day approaches.
“He needs a victory to survive,” one senior administration official told The Daily Beast. “A repeat of [the Soviet loss in] Afghanistan is literally an existential threat to a regime that is built on the idea that a strongman leader can revive the glory of the Russian empire.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a concert marking the anniversary of the annexation of Crimea, on March 18, 2022 in Moscow, Russia.
Getty
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly, said that the pressure to “deliver a victory, any kind of victory,” could set into motion an unprecedented escalation.
Putin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has denied Russia would announce mobilization or officially declare war on Ukraine on Victory Day.
Some of the day’s “festivities” could tout seeming successes of the invasion into Ukraine as a way to bolster support back home—either just to show off some alleged wins to justify the invasion or to garner support for further escalation.
The pomp and circumstance could include the twisted plan to present 500 Ukrainian prisoners of war during a parade to show Russia’s military might in comparison to Ukraine’s, according to a report from Russian human rights project “Gulagu.net.” Putin is also reportedly considering holding sham trials of Ukrainians that Russia has claimed have been supportive of Nazis, in an imitation of the Nuremberg trials that worked to hold German Nazi leadership accountable.
The warnings of Russia’s plans come as Russian forces are suffering massive losses—as of Wednesday, Russia has lost 24,500 troops, according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. And the Russian military has been struggling to keep its manpower up to the task, working to recruit more people to join up, without much success.
Declaring war more formally would allow Russia to tap into reserve forces to swell its military operation on the ground in Ukraine to reach for a more decisive victory.
The symbolic Victory Day comes at a moment where Putin needs all the help he can get after his forces have been faltering for weeks. After his troops failed to take Kyiv and achieve some of his more ambitious goals in Ukraine, Russian forces have had to retreat and replenish their supplies to go after Eastern Ukraine, in a kind of plan B for Russia. And while fighting continues in Eastern Ukraine, the delay in rerouting plans towards the east has allowed Ukraine to build up its weaponry to try to more effectively thwart Russian attacks, which may put Russia at a disadvantage for some time, Rob Lee, a Russian military analyst, told The Daily Beast.
“If you start sending conscripts to war, they start getting killed in large numbers, that becomes a really big political risk.”
“I don’t think time is on Russia’s side, as Ukraine receives more modern weapons [such as] the howitzers,” Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told The Daily Beast. “I think Ukraine is going to be in a stronger position in a few weeks relative to today.”
The symbolic nature of Victory Day could serve as the ideal platform for Putin to pepper Russians with more propaganda on the invasion in Ukraine to garner support for a larger scale mobilization. But selling a more full-hearted mobilization domestically might be difficult, given that Russia has been suggesting that the “special” operation is going well.
“I’m quite curious,” Budanov said. “How will they explain this to their own people? Why does Russia, with its, as they say, the first or second army in the world, need mobilization, when, according to their official reports, everything is going according to plan and Ukraine as a military machine is nothing?”
The date could, of course, have no bearing on whether Putin declares war. The future of Putin’s war in Ukraine will depend on what happens on the ground in Eastern Ukraine, not a date, Michael Kofman, the research program director in the Russia Studies Program at CNA, a Virginia-based national security research organization, told The Daily Beast.
“The political leadership [will] assess the current situation in Donbas and their likelihood of achieving their goals by this campaign,” Kofman said. “Right now it’s still unclear if the Russian offensive is going very slowly because they’re meeting far more resistance than they expected, because their forces are much weaker now, or are they actually prosecuting this more methodically and more carefully to preserve the force.”
And Russian forces aren’t doing so hot in Eastern Ukraine, a senior U.S. defense official said in a briefing Monday.
“They still have not solved all their logistics problem, and quite frankly, there’s… a risk and casualty aversion that we continue to see by the Russians now, not just in the air, but on the ground,” the senior U.S. defense official said. The Russians are being “very, very cautious, very tepid.”
Pulling out all the stops for Ukraine, in any case, might be political suicide for Putin, warned Lee. After mobilizing for a war, the expectations of successes from Ukraine might be higher—successes the Russian military hasn’t proved it can achieve. And if conscripts die in large numbers, upheaval about Putin’s decisions might mount.
“With volunteers… it’s a bit of a different scenario where Russians can say, ‘ok you chose to join, you chose to serve,’” Lee told The Daily Beast. “If you mobilize it means you need to achieve something more, because then the stakes are raised higher. And if you start sending conscripts to war, they start getting killed in large numbers, that becomes a really big political risk.”
U.S. officials have warned Victory Day might not be the endgame for Putin, as well, and have been fuzzy on the date at which Putin might make his next big move in Ukraine. Sometime around mid-May, for instance, Putin will likely try to annex portions of Eastern Ukraine as well as Kherson, Michael Carpenter, the U.S. Ambassador to Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, predicted this week.
The intelligence on the plans is “highly credible,” Carpenter said.
“We believe that Russia will try to annex the Donetsk ‘people’s republic’ and Luhansk ‘people’s republic’… to Russia,” Carpenter said Monday in a briefing with reporters. “I cannot speak to whether Russia will be able to execute on its planning, but this is the planning that we are seeing.”
Budanov, Ukraine defense intelligence chief, however, warned that the Russian military is eyeing victory on May 9 in Eastern Ukraine in the Donbas.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Wednesday highlighted new figures showing the government’s red ink will grow less than expected this year and the national debt will shrink this quarter as he tried to counter criticism of his economic leadership amid growing dismay over inflation going into midterm elections that will decide control of Congress.
Biden, embracing deficit reduction as a way to fight inflation, stressed that the dip in the national debt would be the first in six years, an achievement that eluded former President Donald Trump despite his promises to improve the federal balance sheet.
“The bottom line is the deficit went up every year under my predecessor before the pandemic and during the pandemic. It has gone down both years since I’ve been here,” Biden said. “Why is it important? Because bringing down the deficit is one way to ease inflationary pressures.”
The president is placing a renewed emphasis on reducing the deficit — which is the gap between what the nation spends and what it takes in — in order to blunt Republican criticism that the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package has left the U.S. economy worse off. It’s an attempt to burnish his credentials as a responsible steward of the economy while trying to fend off criticism about inflation at a 40-year high. The reopening of the economy coming out of the coronavirus pandemic and the commodity squeeze resulting from the Russia-Ukraine war has made high prices a key political risk for Democrats.
But it is unclear if greater fiscal responsibility can deliver politically for Biden as Democrats try to defend their control of the House and Senate. His two most recent Democratic predecessors, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, also cut budget deficits, only to leave office and see their Republican successors use the savings on tax cuts.
When reporters tried to question Biden about other topics after his remarks, the president prodded, “You don’t want to ask about deficits?”
Bidden is making a nuanced argument about how the financial outlook has improved: Strong job gains over the past 16 months have increased total incomes and led to additional tax revenues. That means that this fiscal year’s budget deficit will decline $1.5 trillion, much better than the $1.3 trillion that was initially forecast. Less government borrowing will, in turn, limit the financial sources of inflation.
But the expected $26 billion drop this quarter in the national debt — which is money the U.S. owes due to accumulated deficits over time — will be short-lived, as the debt already totals $23.9 trillion and will continue to rise in the second half of this year. And while Biden expects his plans will improve the outlook for budget deficits over the next decade, the national debt would continue to climb. The Biden administration believes that the cost of servicing the debt is low enough to sustain the borrowing, while critics say structural changes are needed to improve the long-term outlook.
“There needs to be a real fiscal restructuring because we continue to see these trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office who now leads the center-right American Action Forum.
Holtz-Eakin said the Biden administration is taking credit for lower deficits over the past two years that largely occurred due to the end of coronavirus-related spending, rather than fixing the finances of Medicare and Social Security that will determine the long-term budget outlook.
“That doesn’t seem to be the right aspiration for a great country,” Holtz-Eakin said. “What they’re doing is essentially deferring the need to do anything real and genuinely fix the programs that are important to people.”
Deficit reduction also matches a priority of Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the key Democratic vote in the evenly split Senate who blocked the passage of Biden’s domestic and environmental agenda in December. The reduction also occurs amid rising interest rates on U.S. Treasury notes, a consequence of inflation running at 8.5% and the Federal Reserve’s efforts to reduce price pressures.
Within an hour of Biden’s remarks, Senate Republicans gathered to challenge Biden’s economic policies. Their core critique is that overspending in response to COVID-19 was paired with restrictions on domestic oil and natural gas production, leading to higher gasoline prices than under Trump.
’The biggest drag on the U.S. economy right now involves the rising energy costs,” said Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska. “This is purely a self-inflicted wound by the Biden administration.”
One of the challenges for Biden is that voters have largely shrugged off deficit increases and seldom rewarded deficit cuts. Voters might discuss the idea of reducing deficits with pollsters, yet health care, incomes and inflation are often top of mind when casting their ballots.
Norman Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, noted that deficits are often “abstract” for voters. The recent low interest rates have also muted any potential economic drags from higher deficits, which have risen following the COVID-19 pandemic and, separately, the 2008 financial crisis, to help the economy recover.
“They’re more likely to respond to things that are in their wheelhouse or that they believe will have a more direct effect on their lives,” Ornstein said. Deficits are “a step removed for most voters, and we’ve been through periods where we’ve had the big deficits and debt and it’s not like it devastated directly people’s lives.”
“Roe has been the law of the land for almost fifty years, and basic fairness and the stability of our law demand that it not be overturned,” Biden said in a statement after Politico published a draft of a Supreme Court majority opinion that would strike down Roe v. Wade.
The President later Tuesday morning told reporters that if the final opinion is issued along the lines of the draft it would be a “radical decision” that would throw into question “a whole range of rights.”
“The idea that we’re letting the states make those decisions, localities make those decisions, would be a fundamental shift in what we’ve done,” Biden told reporters before boarding Air Force One.
He continued, “So it goes far beyond, in my view … the concern of whether or not there is the right to choose. It goes to other basic rights — the right to marriage, the right to determine a whole range of things.”
“It’s a fundamental shift in American jurisprudence,” Biden said.
The President said he was “not prepared” to make a judgment on whether the Senate should remove the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade, as some lawmakers — like Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont — have called for.
A Supreme Court spokesperson said in a statement the draft published by Politico is “authentic,” but said “it does not represent a decision by the Court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case.”
The President said he still hoped there were not enough votes to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Earlier on Tuesday, the President said in a written statement that if the court does overturn Roe, it will fall on lawmakers to protect access to reproductive health care and said he would work to pass legislation codifying the right to abortion. He also urged voters to elect supporters of abortion rights in the November midterm elections.
“At the federal level, we will need more pro-choice Senators and a pro-choice majority in the House to adopt legislation that codifies Roe, which I will work to pass and sign into law,” the President said.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters later on Tuesday, “The President’s position is that we need to codify Roe, and that is what he has long called on Congress to act on.”
Psaki continued, “What is also true is that there has been a vote on the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would do exactly that, and there were not even enough votes, even if there was no filibuster, to get that done.”
The legislation, which would protect abortion access, passed the House in September but failed to advance in the Senate.
If the court issues a final opinion along the lines of the draft, it would be the most consequential abortion decision in decades and would transform the landscape of women’s reproductive health in America
Politico on Monday published a draft of a majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito that would strike down Roe v. Wade. The draft was circulated in early February, according to Politico, and the publishing of the draft is a stunning breach of Supreme Court confidentiality. The final opinion has not been released and votes and language can change before opinions are formally released. The opinion in this case is not expected to be published until late June.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts issued a statement on Tuesday saying he had launched an investigation into the source of the leak, saying, “This was a singular and egregious breach of that trust that is an affront to the Court and the community of public servants who work here.”
The Biden administration had urged the Supreme Court to uphold Roe v. Wade and to invalidate the Mississippi law that bars most abortions after 15 weeks. Biden has said in the past he would seek to codify Roe v. Wade, and that his administration was “deeply committed” to protecting access to reproductive health care, including abortion.
The President said in his Tuesday statement he has directed his Gender Policy Council and White House Counsel’s Office to prepare different options in response to “the continued attack on abortion and reproductive rights.”
“We will be ready when any ruling is issued,” Biden said.
The President said his administration had argued strongly in defense of Roe v. Wade before the Supreme Court.
“We said that Roe is based on ‘a long line of precedent recognizing ‘the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty … against government interference with intensely personal decisions,'” Biden said.
Biden, a lifelong devout Catholic, has said he is personally opposed to abortion because of his faith but does not believe he should impose his views on the rest of society.
Biden wrote in his 2007 book, “Promises to Keep”: “I personally am opposed to abortion, but I don’t think I have the right to impose my view — on something I accept as a matter of faith — on the rest of society. I’ve thought a lot about it, and my position probably doesn’t please anyone. I think the government should stay out completely.”
“I’ve stuck to my middle-of-the-road position on abortion for more than thirty years. I still vote against partial birth abortion and federal funding, and I’d like to find ways to make it easier for scared young mothers to choose not to have an abortion, but I will also vote against a constitutional amendment that strips a woman of her right to make her own choice. That position has earned me the distrust of some women’s groups and the outright enmity of the Right to Life groups,” Biden wrote in his book.
Biden previously was a longtime supporter of the Hyde Amendment — which bars federal funding from being used to pay for abortions, except in the cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is in jeopardy — but reversed his position while he was running for President in 2020. Biden said he changed his mind because of laws that Republican state lawmakers had enacted making access to abortions more difficult for women who cannot afford the procedure or must travel to obtain it. He said these laws were extreme and in violation of Roe v. Wade.
This story has been updated with additional information.
The first lady will depart Washington for Romania on Thursday, stopping first at Mihail Kogalniceanu Airbase on Friday, where she will meet with service members before heading to the capital city of Bucharest on Saturday. In Bucharest, Biden will hold meetings with members of the Romanian government, as well as humanitarian aid workers. Romania has seen the largest influx of Ukrainian refugees as a result of the crisis (after Poland), with hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians crossing the border into the country since the war began three months ago, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Biden, a community college professor, will also spend time in Bucharest with educators who are helping teach displaced Ukrainian children and assist in their schooling as they adjust to their new environment.
On Saturday evening, Biden will travel to Bratislava, Slovakia, where she will meet with United States embassy staff before departing the following day for Kosice and Vysne Nemecke, Slovakia, to meet with Ukrainian refugees. Biden will also greet local Slovaks who have opened their homes to families from Ukraine seeking refuge. More than 350,000 Ukrainians have fled to Slovakia, according to UNHCR.
Biden wraps her trip on Monday, May 9, by meeting with members of the Slovak government before departing for the United States.
The trip will be the first lady’s second solo foreign trip; in July, she went to Japan to attend the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.