Zelensky faces impossible task ahead of meetings in Washington
As CNN reported last week, there is just about $2 billion still available in the eyes of the administration the US can send out. There is $4.8 billion left in the presidential drawdown authority, but that funding is used to send existing US stockpiles to Ukraine and the US only has about $1 billion left to replenish those stockpiles. There is then about $1 billion left in intelligence and defense surveillance funds.
Ukraine war: Zelensky heads to US in bid to rescue $60bn military aid
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has arrived in Washington DC to try to rescue an imperilled US defence package to Kyiv worth billions of dollars.
The aid has become embroiled in US domestic, partisan politics, with Republicans demanding concessions on border funding in exchange.
It marks Mr Zelensky’s third visit to the US since Russia’s 2022 invasion.
The week is a crucial one for Ukraine, with the EU also deciding whether to open accession talks to the bloc.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has signalled that he opposes the move, and has the power to block such a decision.
Mr Orban and Mr Zelensky had an apparently intense conversation when they met on Sunday at the inauguration of Argentina’s new president. The details of their discussion have not been revealed.
Instead Of Fixing Welfare, Biden Admin Targets Crisis Pregnancy Centers
The goals of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program are, in fact, advanced by the services pregnancy resource centers provide.
Aquarter-century after welfare reform, there’s bipartisan interest in improving the system. But the Biden administration’s initial foray has needlessly picked a fight with conservatives over abortion. A gratuitous attempt at advancing leftist ideology by singling out crisis pregnancy centers will make the goal of improving federal anti-poverty programs harder, not easier, to achieve.
In the mid-1990s, Congress passed bipartisan welfare reform that converted the old cash welfare program into buckets of money that went to state and local agencies, known as block grants. Part of the appeal of block grants in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (TANF) was their ability to give states flexibility in designing anti-poverty programs. In theory, states would be able to act as laboratories of democracy and design programs that responded to local needs and led to greater self-sufficiency. Unfortunately, some of that flexibility has been abused.