WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator JD Vance (R-OH) and Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC), along with several of their colleagues from the House and Senate, blasted the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) over a lack of responsiveness to their demand for a detailed, crosscutting report of all funding provided to Ukraine.
The OMB response to Senator Vance’s initial request omits key information required to calculate the full amount provided to Ukraine, including names of other recipient countries of the funding, and includes outdated figures not adjusted to reflect a $6.2 billion “accounting error” revealed in June. These omissions, along with other factors, shield from public view the United States’ true spending in Ukraine by potentially billions of dollars.
The letter reads, in part:
“You responded to this request 7 months and 23 days later with a letter and a spreadsheet. The letter states “transparency and accountability are paramount to ensuring American taxpayers can be confident in their assistance in [sic] helping the Ukrainians fight for their country against Russia’s aggression.” Your response does not approach the standard set out by this declaration. … For the reasons outlined above, we believe we lack key information about the U.S. government’s Ukraine-related expenditures. Perhaps most notably, we remain without an accurate figure for how much the United States has spent to date in total on this conflict. If OMB’s spreadsheet is to be relied on to produce such a figure—and we believe it cannot be—it is around $111 billion. It would appear likely that the data you have yet to provide would raise this figure by an indeterminate magnitude.”
Read the full letter here and below:
For Background:
- In September, Senator Vance demanded an explanation of major discrepancies between administration officials’ statements regarding funding provided to Ukraine.
- Also in September, in a response to a request from Senator Vance, the White House confirmed U.S. taxpayers have allocated over $100 billion to the war in Ukraine thus far.
- In August, OMB sent a request for $24 billion in additional spending related to the Ukraine conflict.
- In January, Senator Vance demanded a “full crosscutting” report from the Biden administration on U.S. security assistance provided to Ukraine
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