A Republican-led Congress may grow weary of cutting checks to Ukraine, GOP leader Kevin McCarthy warned as Congress has already offered some $66 billion since the start of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion. 

‘I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine. They just won’t do it,’ the Republican leader, who stands to cinch the speakership if his party takes back the House, told Punchbowl News in an interview published Tuesday.  

‘It’s not a free blank check. And then there’s the things [the Biden administration] is not doing domestically. Not doing the border and people begin to weigh that. Ukraine is important, but at the same time it can’t be the only thing they do and it can’t be a blank check.’ 

‘I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine. They just won’t do it,’ GOP leader Kevin McCarthy said 

McCarthy’s remarks come as Russian strikes over the past week have knocked out power for a third of Ukraine, so says President Volodymyr Zelensky

In next month’s midterm elections Republicans are favored to take back the House and have a chance at taking control of the Senate. 

Ukraine aid so far has had broad bipartisan consensus, but Republican grumblings over the cost and the lack of accountability as to where it goes have grown with each fading month the Russia-Ukraine war drags on. 

Such a threat could prompt the Biden administration to push for a year-long aid package during the lame duck session between November and January, should Republicans capture either chamber. 

McCarthy’s remarks come as Russian strikes over the past week have knocked out power for a third of Ukraine, so says President Volodymyr Zelensky. He asked the U.S. and other G7 nations for modern air defense systems. 

Putin is set to deploy 9,000 troops to Belarus on its border with Ukraine, sparking fears that a fresh ground assault on the Ukrainian capital could be imminent.

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It comes as Russia also threatened to equip Belarusian warplanes with nuclear missile capability after Russian soldiers came flooding across the border ‘by the trainload’ on Saturday.

The Belarusian border, which lies 140 miles from Kyiv, was used as a launchpad for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February. 

Lawmakers tacked another $12.2 billion in aid to a stopgap spending bill last month. One day later on September 28 the Defense Department offered another $1.1 billion in security assistance. On October 15 the DoD announced another $725 milllion in security assistance for Ukraine. 

Congress initially offered $13.6 billion to Ukraine in March at the onset of the invasion and topped it off with a $40 billion aid package in May.

About half of the $54 billion has been targeted toward security aid through the Department of Defense, the other half has gone through the Department of State and other aid agencies.

A soldier searches for bodies in the rubble of a building hit by a Russian missile on October 13, 2022 in Kupiansk, Kharkiv oblast, Ukraine

Zelensky asked the U.S. and other G7 nations for modern air defense systems

The Republican Study Committee, the largest conservative caucus in the House, criticized the most recent $12 billion in aid. All but 10 House Republicans voted against the stopgap funding bill, but largely because they felt they had been locked out of negotiations and wanted government funding to run until the new Congress in January. 

As of September, about 37 percent of Americans believe the U.S. is giving about the right amount of aid to Ukraine, 20 percent think too much and 18 percent think not enough, according to Pew Research. Thirty-two percent of Republicans thought the U.S. is giving too much aid, 30 percent thought just enough. 

Rep. Michael McCaul, top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, still thinks the U.S. could do more aid.  

‘Once we finally gave them what they needed, like the HIMARS, they started winning and they’re beating them,’ McCaul said according to the Dallas Morning News. ‘And I don’t understand [opposition to Ukraine aid]. I grew up during the Cold War and I thought killing Russians was a good thing.’