Arkansas Representative French Hill on government spending and Syria visit

WASHINGTON, D.C. (CBS, KYMA/KECY) - Arkansas Representative French Hill spoke with Face the Nation moderator Margaret Brennan on Sunday to discuss government spending.

According to Brennan, President Biden requested a $44 billion aid for the following items:

• $24 billion to aid Ukraine
• $16 billion to help communuties dealing with natural disasters
• $4 billion to fight the flow of fentanyl

Biden's request has raised concerns amongst House Republicans, with Hill responding:

"I think a majority of House Republicans would prefer that those core spending items, not so much the FEMA emergency numbers, but the other numbers be handled through the existing budget and appropriations process. And that's going to cause concern for a lot of House Republicans, not just conservatives in the House conference. We'd like to see that incorporated in the budgets that we're already negotiating now. I personally support ejecting Putin from Ukraine, I support funding for Ukraine. I just introduced this week, the Ukraine Reconstruction Act, which converts Russian assets to pay for the war and pay for reconstruction of Ukraine. So, this is something...a battle that we need to win. And we're going to work out how best to do that in the next few weeks."

During the interview, Brennan and Hill touched on the latter's visit to Syria. According to Brennan, Hill's visit marked the first time a United States lawmaker visited Syria "since 2017, when John McCain went."

"I wanted to see for myself the death and destruction caused by 12 years of Assad's brutality against his own people. He said keep me in office or I’ll destroy the country and he's certainly done that. Just last week, Russian aircraft flew 41 sorties, killing some 40 people in Syria, including 15 children...What we need is for the whole world to have a political solution to Syria, and let's recognize that this is the first battleground that Vladimir Putin began killing innocent civilians several years before he went into Ukraine. These are...this is a failure of the national and global leadership. And we need to continue to take action to find a political solution and cut off Assad's funding, cut off his ability to have a drug trade throughout the world and get help to the people in northwest Syria that are victims of the February earthquakes."

Rep. French Hill (R-Ark)