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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday said President Biden should send more U.S. military forces to Eastern Europe and expand his travels next week to travel “outside” Brussels, while naming his move to blame Russian President Vladimir Putin for the rise inflation in the United States as “bullshit.”
During a speech on the Senate floor on Wednesday morning, just hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s virtual address to Congress, McConnell, Kentucky, reaffirmed the importance of strengthening NATO’s eastern flank and said he had been calling for a Biden administration since December. to “speed up the delivery of lethal aid, aircraft and tank weapons”.
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McConnell, in a scathing criticism of the Biden administration, said that “arms transfer efforts moved at the speed of bureaucracy.”
Criticizing the administration, McConnell said the White House “insisted that its hesitation and restraint was to avoid escalation.”
But at every step [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has escalated for three weeks now, and the Putin invasion, the reality on the ground, is evolving,” McConnell said, saying it is “more difficult now than a few months ago to maintain a pipeline of weapons and intelligence for a brave Ukraine.” help is open.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks to reporters after a Republican strategy meeting at the Capitol on October 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
“In particular, the Russian air offensive is becoming increasingly deadly and aggressive,” McConnell warned.
McConnell urged Biden to “deploy more U.S. forces to reinforce NATO’s eastern flank and use new credit cut and guarantee powers to help bolster the defenses of our forward allies and partners.”
“Many of these partners are generously helping Ukraine, and we must help them replenish their stockpiles with more modern American capabilities that will improve NATO interoperability and strengthen deterrence,” McConnell said.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky delivers a video message to Congress at the Capitol on Wednesday, March 16, 2022. (Drew Angerer, Pool via AP)
McConnell’s comments came after Zelenskiy pleaded with the United States to “do more” by imposing a no-fly zone, providing additional aircraft and air defense systems, and creating a new security alliance.
The White House claims that the creation of a no-fly zone will be seen as an “escalation” and “could provoke a war with Russia.”
Ukraine is not a member of NATO, therefore it is not covered by the provision of Article V of the NATO alliance, which states that if one member country is attacked, all member countries will take action to provide assistance.
Biden is expected to speak at the White House on Wednesday afternoon announcing $800 million in additional military aid to Ukraine, on top of the $200 million announced on Saturday.
With the new funding, total United States aid to Ukraine topped $1 billion in just a few days, and total US military aid to Ukraine topped $1.2 billion over the past year.
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Biden is set to travel to Brussels, Belgium next week for the NATO summit scheduled for March 24.
But McConnell urged Biden to expand his trip and “go beyond Brussels.”
“He has to go to countries like Poland, Romania or Lithuania to meet NATO allies on the eastern flank,” McConnell said. “And he should go beyond NATO to deepen our diplomatic and security cooperation with important American partners.”
Meanwhile, McConnell said that “even with a literal ground war in Europe, the collapse of the Democrats is so painful that inflation, not Ukraine, still tops the list of the American people’s biggest fears.”
“From the gas station to the grocery store, clothing, diapers and baby formula, furniture and essentials, car repairs and replacements, Democratic politics has put working families on a treadmill where they must run faster and faster every day. a month just to stay put,” McConnell said, citing “soaring” rental prices that are rising “faster than since 1991” and food prices rising “faster than since 1980.”
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“The Democrats have lost a shameless campaign to blame 12 months of inflation not for 12 months of their bad policies, but instead for the latest three-week crisis in Europe,” McConnell continued. The White House tells us, quote: “The culprit is Putin’s price hikes.”
“Of course, this is complete nonsense,” McConnell said. “This is Biden’s inflation and he needs to own the White House.”
This week, Biden again claimed that Putin and the COVID-19 pandemic were to blame for record high inflation in the United States, and said the price hike had “nothing to do” with his administration’s policies.
“We know families are still struggling with higher prices,” Biden said. “Let’s be absolutely clear about why prices are high or high right now for two reasons.”
The first, according to Biden, has to do with “how the global economy works.”
“A factory in Taiwan that makes computer chips is closing due to the COVID outbreak. This causes a ripple effect that slows down car production,” Biden said. “So we’ve had major supply chain disruptions because of the pandemic, and our supply chain is so important because so many materials are coming from elsewhere.”
“And now the second major cause of inflation is Vladimir Putin,” Biden said.
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“We have seen the price of gas rise by more than a dollar since he deployed his troops on the border with Ukraine – they have risen in price by a dollar and five cents,” Biden said.
“A big part of that reason is that Putin started amassing troops along the border and then crossed it. And you know what? The world has noticed it,” Biden said. “The market expected, prices rose, and then Putin stepped in.”
He added: “Make no mistake, Vladimir Putin is largely responsible for the current surge in gas prices and has nothing to do with the American rescue plan.”
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Biden said that “rescuing our economy didn’t cause this problem” but promised to “fix it.”
Meanwhile, inflation reached a new 40-year high in February. The CPI rose 7.9% year on year, according to data released Thursday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Month-on-month, according to the data, inflation rose by 0.8%.
The year-on-year figure is in line with estimates and compares with an annual jump of 7.5% in January, the fastest increase since February 1982, when inflation reached 7.6%.
Natural gas jumped 6.6% in February, accounting for almost a third of the price increase, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Thursday. Food prices, by comparison, rose 1%.
The February data was recorded before the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, which saw gas station prices rise to $4.31 today, according to the AAA, a record high.
Last week, Biden announced a ban on all imports of Russian oil, gas and energy to the United States, targeting the “main artery” of the Russian economy amid Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war with Ukraine. Biden warned that the ban would cost American families.
Russian oil exports account for about one-third of Europe’s oil imports, but Russian exports account for just under 10% of total US imports.