October 02, 2023 01:40 PM UTC

Bennet Flays House Republicans For Shameful Putin Bootlicking

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• by: Colorado Pols

An agreement was reached on Saturday night for a relatively “clean” continuing resolution to fund the federal government for a further six weeks, avoiding the government shutdown widely expected when we last wrote on the subject Friday afternoon. Generally perceived as a capitulation by Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy who abandoned his own party’s dead-on-arrival appropriations bills loaded with draconian budget cuts and relied on Democrats to pass the compromise measure, the biggest “concession” made to House Republicans was to temporarily remove funding for the war in Ukraine from the deal.

As FOX News’ Andrea Vacchiano reports, taking Ukraine funding out of the bill provoked an outraged response from Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado, who held up passage in the Senate Saturday evening while he sought and got verbal commitments from leadership to ensure the Ukrainians are not left out in the cold as a second winter under invasion from Russia fast approaches:

Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet held up the vote on the continuing resolution (CR) to avoid a government shutdown on Saturday night, citing concerns about its lack of funding for Ukraine, sources tell Fox News…

The bill, whose passage caused members of Congress to applaud amid the pressure of a government shutdown, will fund the government for another 45 days. The bill authorizes $16 billion in disaster relief, but does not include relief to Ukraine — which Bennet, a Democrat, objected to.

Bennet told reporters that he was still able to make progress across the aisle in regard to giving more aid to Ukraine, which has been warring with Russian troops for a year-and-a-half.

“It’s worked out because we were able to get a statement from the leadership that’s going to be released soon, talking about the bipartisan support for fully funding Ukraine and making sure that we fulfill a role that the entire world is relying on us to fulfill,” Bennet said.

We’ll start with the most important point: unlike Republicans like Rep. Lauren Boebert who gladly marched the nation to the brink this weekend, Sen. Bennet was never going to let the government shut down. Bennet’s goal was to extract additional commitments from Senate leadership to quickly pass funding for Ukraine before this “hiccup” of Vladimir Putin appeasement becomes a material lapse, and to reassure our allies that despite a few bad Republican apples the United States remains a partner they can trust. From Bennet’s statement Saturday evening:

Ukraine’s fight is not just for Ukraine. Theirs is a fight for democracy. At the beginning of Vladimir Putin’s lawless invasion, no one would have predicted how successful the Ukrainian people and their soldiers would be. Their courage, relentlessness, and sacrifice have exposed Putin’s weakness and renewed the world’s faith in democracy.

Sen. Bennet, as readers may know but you might not, is the son and grandchild of Holocaust survivors living in Poland during World War II. During his address Saturday evening to the Senate (video above), Bennet spoke passionately about the experience of his family and the importance of standing up to Russian aggression today:

As everybody else in this chamber knows, certainly the presiding officer knows, sixteen million people were killed in Ukraine and in Poland by the Nazis and by Stalin. And my mom cannot believe that she has lived long enough to see another land war break out in Europe…

We believe in democracy. We believe in the rule of law. We believe in freedom of the speech and freedom of the press. Vladimir Putin believes in none of those things.

…I thought it was important for the leadership of the Senate to put out a statement tonight–Senate Schumer and Senator McConnell and several others on each side of the aisle–underscoring that we are going to spend the next 45 days working together to pass a robust Ukraine aid package, and I think that’s vitally important.

Trying to draw an equivalence between the Republican treachery that nearly shut down the federal government and Sen. Bennet’s last-minute demand that the defense of Western democracy not be forsaken to please those same Republicans is not just wrong, but totally ridiculous. The aid and comfort by MAGA Republicans for Russia and against Ukraine has more to do with their blind loyalty to Donald Trump than any understanding of foreign policy, and their constant threats to undermine American support for Ukraine are at odds with a majority of elected Republicans, the American public at large, and our allies across the world. It’s a sad step downward for the “Party of Reagan” credited with winning the Cold War.

While Boebert does her best to ignorantly debase American leadership in global affairs, Michael Bennet is doing what he can to preserve the world’s trust. A clearer contrast from within a single state would be hard to imagine.