After the U.S. Senate passed the Ukraine Lend-Lease Act by unanimous consent earlier this month, the House voted 417-10 on Thursday to send the bill to President Biden’s desk. At Defense One, Jacqueline Feldscher details what the bill does:
The intent of the bill is to expedite arms shipments to Ukraine by reviving a World War II-era program to lease military equipment to allies. Without the bill, if Ukraine wanted to lease military equipment, there are conditions, such as returning the equipment within five years and reimbursing the United States for anything that gets broken, [the Cato Institute’s Jordan] Cohen said. The bill will remove those restrictions. It also gets rid of the requirement for Biden to justify to Congress what he wants to lease to Ukraine in an emergency authorization, making it very easy for the administration to send any platform other than things like chemical and nuclear weapons, though there are still political and logistical realities that might limit what makes it into aid packages.
“Biden will more or less be able to lease any weapons systems he wants to Ukraine without the broad requirements that Ukraine would need to pay us back,” Cohen said. “It gets rid of the entire bureaucratic process to sell a weapon. Now, you can just lease it.”