The Biden administration is seeking another $10 billion to help protect Ukraine against the Russian invasion and an additional $22.5 billion to cover coronavirus pandemic-related expenses, two major additions to budget talks already underway.
The acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Shalanda Young, laid out the need for the supplemental funding in a Thursday blog post. The requests would be additions to a planned budget agreement that Congress is trying to finish before a March 11 deadline.
Young said in the blog post that the money was urgently needed. The $10 billion to Ukraine would be a rapid escalation of the $1.4 billion provided by the United States since 2021, a reflection of the crisis caused by the Russian offensive that began last month. Young said the money would cover “additional humanitarian, security, and economic assistance in Ukraine and the neighboring region in the coming days and weeks.”
Last week, Biden administration officials told congressional aides that their requests would include $3.5 billion for the Pentagon and $2.9 billion for humanitarian aid as Russia’s invasion has caused more than a million Ukrainian refugees to flee their country.
The $22.5 billion tied to the coronavirus would pay for testing, treatments and vaccines as well as investments in research and efforts to increase vaccinations worldwide. There had been expectations that the request was going to be for as much as $30 billion, which comes after lawmakers and the Biden and Trump administrations committed a combined $5.8 trillion over multiple years on the pandemic, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.