A measure that would create a special inspector general to oversee U.S. Ukraine aid has failed. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) had hoped to attach an amendment to a broader bill repealing the 2022 and 1991 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMFs).
The vote Tuesday night was 26 for and 68 against Hawley's amendment. All but two votes for the measure came from Republicans. The two Democrats in favor were Sens. Jon Tester of Montana and Jon Osoff of Georgia. Sen. Kristin Sinema, an Independent from Arizona, also voted for the amendment. Republicans were decidedly split, with 22 voting against their colleague.
A final vote for the AUMF bill is expected this week.
Hawley has joined other Republican colleagues in calling for oversight of the over $113 billion in aid that has been appropriated for Ukraine since the beginning of the war a year ago. Of that total, over $75 billion has been spent.
Earlier in March, Hawley (R-Mo.) and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) introduced a standalone bill that would create a Special Inspector General for Ukraine Assistance (SIGUA) to oversee all military and non-military U.S. assistance, direct the new office to submit quarterly reports to Congress on obligations and expenditure of U.S funds and the provision of weapons and equipment, and track the Ukrainian government’s compliance with anti-corruption measures, among other provisions.
"(Ukraine) is now the largest recipient of United States overseas aid, we need to have one watchdog that is fully accounting for everything we spent and how it’s being used," Hawley told Fox News this week "It’s very simple."
He said he envisioned the SIGUA to be much like the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan (SIGAR) John Sopko, who the senator called "tough and tenacious."
Sopko, who has been SIGAR since 2012, found that at least $19 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds sent to Afghanistan was lost to waste, fraud and abuse from 2002 to 2020. It could have been much more than that, given that Sopko's office only combed through $63 billion of the $134 billion the U.S. appropriated for reconstruction during that period.
But this is only part of the story. SIGAR had a heck of time even tracking the funds in the early days of Sopko's tenure. At one point, his office reported that at least $45 billion spent before 2010 (SIGAR was created in 2008, mind you; he wasn't on the job until 2012) on rebuilding Afghanistan couldn't readily be found. According to Sopko at the time, this wasn't an abuse or fraud issue, but accounting chaos: The Pentagon didn't record everything the same way, and as a result, was only able to turn over data for $21 billion of the $66 billion it spent during that time period.
This only speaks for the need to get one's arms around the billions that have already been sent to Ukraine in the form of weapons and economic assistance, supporters of Hawley's efforts say. "Oversight on aid today means a safer Europe tomorrow. It is not in America's, Europe's or Ukraine's interest for the us to send over $115 Billion in aid, much of it lethal arms, without taking care to ensure it doesn't get redirected to corrupt bureaucrats or worse, potential terrorist cells which could render the entire region vastly more dangerous for decades," charges Saurabh Sharma, president of the conservative American Moment.
"Senator Hawley's amendment is a practical solution to helping prevent a long tail of undesirable outcomes," he added.
Nevertheless, Hawley and Vance will now have to find another way to create SIGUA after today's vote. Critics of the legislation, which included Hawley's own GOP colleague, Sen. James Risch from Idaho, said a SIGUA would be duplicating some 60 auditing and reporting processes already in place to keep track of the money. In other words, this isn't Afghanistan and they don't need a SIGUA.
"(We) have found zero siphoning of U.S. dollars," Risch said on the floor before the vote. "This is an expenditure that is not necessary because it is being looked after already."
