Senate votes down bill to address Ukraine aid accounting error
David Sivak
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The Senate rejected an amendment on Wednesday that would have told the Pentagon how to calculate the cost of weapons being shipped to Ukraine.
The legislation, voted on as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, failed 39-60, a blow to skeptics of the $100 billion-plus in aid the United States has committed to the war-torn country.
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The Pentagon announced in June it had overstated the value of shipped weapons by $6 billion, giving the U.S. an instant surplus for future aid. In response, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) introduced legislation to address the “shoddy accounting” that he says denies the public the ability to assess accurately whether the war is worth the cost.
The Biden administration has chosen to send Ukraine weapons through what is known as its presidential drawdown authority, giving the country equipment from the Pentagon’s existing stockpile instead of going through the procurement process.
The bill would have established how the Pentagon should calculate the “aggregate value” of the weapons it pulls from those stockpiles.
The Pentagon blamed the $6 billion adjustment on an accounting error — the aid was calculated using replacement costs instead of the net book value — and issued guidance in March to clarify how the equipment should be valued.
But Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), a sponsor of the bill, believes the adjustment was a way to circumvent Congress, buying the Pentagon more time before it had to ask lawmakers for additional aid.
“I think they intentionally decided they need more space now,” he told the Washington Examiner.
“Listen, let’s take one set of values, let’s use it consistently, and if you want more money, come get authorized to do it,” he added. “Otherwise, I just think it’s a shell game.”
Vance did not speculate on why the value of arms changed but said the calculations cloud oversight of aid for everything from Ukraine to NATO.
“I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but it’s certainly a bad thing, and it doesn’t give us an accurate sense of what’s going on,” he told the Washington Examiner.
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The GOP senators are among the most skeptical of Ukrainian aid, a distinctly minority view in the Senate, where the issue is bipartisan.
Hawley has introduced legislation to appoint an inspector general to oversee the aid and wants a vote on the measure as part of the NDAA.