On Sunday, after signing Congress’s 45-day stopgap spending bill on Saturday night, President Joe Biden urged House Republicans to continue to fund and aid Ukraine.
Biden delivered his remarks from the White House, sharing that the next round of negotiations doesn’t need to go down to the wire like Saturday’s. The bill was signed by Biden minutes before the government shutdown deadline.
“I’m sick and tired of the brinksmanship. So are the American people,” Biden said.
He later added, “The truth is we shouldn’t be here in the first place.”
The president also addressed the ongoing war in Ukraine and his continued support for the nation still in the midst of an invasion by Russia.
Biden said that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and other Republican leaders needed to follow through on their commitment to hold a standalone vote on funding for Ukraine.
“I hope my friends on the other side keep their word about support for Ukraine. They said they’re going to support Ukraine in a separate vote,” Biden said. “We cannot, under any circumstance, allow American support for Ukraine to be interrupted.”
The commitment was made at the beginning of the summer when McCarthy and Biden negotiated raising the nation’s debt ceiling. However, in the months since, Republicans have walked back, leaving funding for Ukraine up in the air.
The funding was also missing from the bill he signed on Saturday night, and while he acknowledged its absence, he said he couldn’t justify causing pain to millions of Americans by shutting the government down.
As for McCarthy’s stance, his office released a statement over the weekend, noting that there are challenges the nation is also facing, like the southern border.
“Speaker McCarthy has been clear and consistent: we have an obligation to fix the crisis at the border and to ensure any request for further aid to Ukraine is matched with a sound strategy and accountability. The House will continue to discuss these challenges in the weeks to come,” the statement said.
When asked by reporters if he thought he could trust McCarthy going forward, Biden said he hoped the Speaker was learning from his experiences over the past several days.
“We just made (a deal) about Ukraine. So, we’ll find out,” Biden said.
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