USD$106B Request Puts White House On Collision Course With Isolationist GOP

President Biden has submitted to Congress a huge USD$106 billion supplemental funding request to fund a broad agenda of foreign policy objectives through to the 2024 presidential election.

• The package is designed to provide ongoing support to Ukraine and Israel as they engage in what Biden framed, in an Oval Office speech yesterday, as existential struggle between democracy and autocracy.
• Is it upon this foundation that the White House seeks to frame the 2024 presidential election, to counter a sustained period of polling which has delivered Biden a lukewarm evaluation from voters on his "Bidenomics" domestic economic agenda.
• Biden's request is broken down into the following items: USD$61B in funding for Ukraine. USD$14B for Israel. USD$14B for the border security. USD$10 for humanitarian aid. USD$4B to counter China's influence in developing countries. USD$3.5B for a new submarine industrial base.
• Passage of the request through Congress is far from assured. A third rollcall to elect a Speaker of the House of Representatives is underway. Presumptive speaker Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) is a fiscal conservative representing a bloc of isolationist House Republican who have opposed all additional funding for Ukraine.
• Biden's pitch for a vision of American leadership also appears out of step with much of the Congressional Republican Party: “American leadership is what holds the world together. American alliances are what keep us, America, safe,” Biden said yesterday.