Ukraine funding battle kicks off

A couple weeks of peace is over because now House lawmakers have returned to Capitol Hill and they are kicking off yet another battle over a multi billion dollar aid package for Ukraine, potentially stifling billions in funding for US defense companies. Emily Wilkins went to one of these companies and she joins us now from upstate New York. Emily. Hey, Brian. Well, you know in DC the debate about Ukraine funding is often about Ukraine, but it’s actually U.S. companies like this L3 Harris One in Rochester that’s making tactical communication radios that have seen a bulk of the funding. Of the 113 billion that Congress has passed, 61% have stayed with U.S. companies. But the uncertainty as to whether Congress is going to pass additional funding is impacting the defense supply chain. L3 Harris President for Communications Systems Sam Mehta told me he gets calls all the time from the 470 suppliers to this facility, and they’re trying to figure out how to hire, whether to let go, whether to expand capital. And a lot of those decisions are going to depend on how Congress acts. Listen to what he told me today. We have a significant amount of urgency. You know, we’re delivering out a lot of the last radios from the last supplemental bill. And so this new bill becomes very important for us and even more important for our supply base. Now the House is back in session and Speaker Mike Johnson has said it is a priority for him to try and find a way to get this Ukraine funding done. But that’s going to be difficult with the politics and the fact that a lot of House Republicans don’t want to see any additional funding. Brian. Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, he’s got to make this palatable to House Republicans, To your point, I mean you. It’s got to be agreed to by pretty much everybody. How do you do that? So Johnson’s got a couple different ideas here. Number one is giving the aid but giving it as a loan. The other one is an act that’s been out of bill rather that’s been out there for a while that would basically take Russian assets that were seized by the US and use that funding to support Ukraine. There’s also been discussion about adding conservative priorities to this legislation, like lifting that temporary pause on LNG exports. But we’re going to get a lot more clarity now that lawmakers are actually back in DC and they can get into rooms with each other and chat. Exactly what that’s going to look like. We’re kind of expecting this plan to develop over this week, maybe into next week. But we did hear a Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell call on Mike Johnson today. And he said, hey, look, Senates already passed that $60 billion bill. Johnson needs to put that on the floor and give it a vote. Emily Wilkins, Rochester, NY Emily, appreciate it. Thank you.