House Speaker Kevin McCarthy backtracked on his pledge to remove U.S. aid to Ukraine from House Republicans’ defense spending measure on Saturday, telling reporters that such funds will be included in the legislation after all.
On Friday, McCarthy told reporters at the Capitol that U.S. aid to Ukraine would not be included in House Republicans’ defense appropriations bill and would instead be voted on separately by the lower chamber.
“It would be out and voted on by itself,” McCarthy said. According to Just the News, the proposal to fund the Pentagon included a provision providing Ukraine with $300 million amid its ongoing war against Russia.
When asked about the issue on Saturday, however, McCarthy flip-flopped, claiming, “It became too difficult to [remove the Ukraine funding], so we’re leaving it in.”
The speaker’s backtrack came days after President Joe Biden announced during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that his administration would send an additional $325 million in U.S. military aid to Ukraine, including “air defense capabilities, cluster munitions, [and] anti-tank weapons.” Zelensky, who routinely swindles Western nations into funding his country’s war with Russia, was in Washington, D.C. last week to do exactly that, according to NBC News.
The Biden administration and Congress have worked relentlessly to ensure the well-being of Ukraine’s military, but the same cannot be said when it comes to taking care of America’s men and women in uniform. On Tuesday — two days before Biden’s meeting with Zelensky — the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report detailing the horrific living conditions of the barracks at several U.S. military installations.
According to Military.com, the extensive analysis contains numerous examples of “substandard conditions,” including reports of “bedbugs and roaches,” which the outlet noted “were a common issue at six of the bases that the GAO visited.” Water quality was also a notable issue, with one group of service members telling GAO investigators that their water “is often brown and does not appear safe for drinking.”
Other reported issues at the installations visited by GAO investigators included broken windows, inoperable air conditioning units, and lax security. Inadequate waste disposal and mold were also commonly cited problems.
In summarizing its report, the GAO placed the blame for the aforementioned issues at the feet of the Department of Defense (DOD) and specifically noted how the agency “conducts inefficient oversight” of its members’ living conditions.
“DOD does not track information on the condition of barracks or facilitate collaboration on initiatives to improve barracks,” the report summary reads. “Insufficient oversight hampers DOD’s ability to identify and address long-standing challenges in barracks conditions across the department.”
The GAO further indicated that the Pentagon’s lack of attention and knowledge to this issue impairs its ability to acquire “complete funding information” about how much money it requires to maintain livable barracks. According to the GAO, the DOD requested roughly $15 billion from Congress for “overall facility sustainment” for the 2024 fiscal year “but could not identify how much of this total would be spent toward barracks.”
“The GAO concluded that leaders at the Pentagon are not only failing to provide oversight — instead choosing to largely punt the issue to the branches — but they also don’t consider it a priority,” Military.com summarized in its analysis of the GAO report. “The result has been bureaucratic finger-pointing, with no one office or leader willing to own the issue.”
Substandard conditions at U.S. military barracks are estimated to be plaguing “at least thousands” across the service, according to the report.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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