Follow us on social

Shutterstock_467826320

New Ukraine aid is a go — and it's more than most states get in a year

Congress just passed a $45 billion assistance package for Kyiv on the way out the door for the holidays. We put this spending into context.

Analysis | Europe

This week Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine, arrived in Washington, D.C. to, amongst other things, make the case for why President Biden and the U.S. Congress should provide tens-of-billions of dollars in additional assistance for Ukraine, as it continues to defend itself from Russia’s illegal invasion. 

In an impassioned speech before a joint session of Congress, Zelensky thanked the United States for its support of Ukraine and made the case for even more assistance. “We have artillery, yes, thank you. But what we have, it isn't enough, honestly.”

On Friday, the House answered Zelensky’s plea by passing the omnibus spending bill (largely along party lines) that will fund the federal government for the remainder of fiscal year 2023, and includes $45 billion in emergency assistance to Ukraine. The Senate already approved the measure and the president signed it shortly thereafter.

As Responsible Statecraft and others have pointed out, the United States has already allocated $68 billion to Ukraine, so this $45 billion would push total U.S. spending on Ukraine since the war broke out to approximately $113 billion.

There are a variety of measures that can help to put this remarkable amount of U.S. taxpayer money into context. For starters, it’s more aid than the United States has supplied to any country in one year since at least the Vietnam War. It’s also far more than the $84 billion Russia is expected to spend on its military in 2023. In fact, U.S. assistance to Ukraine is more than every country in the world spends on its military, save for the United States and China. The $113 billion is also nearly as much as the omnibus bill allocates for baseline spending at the State Department and the Department of Homeland Securitycombined, and it’s almost as much as the $118.7 billion the United States will spend on medical care for all U.S. military veterans. 

Given that the omnibus bill funds the entire federal government in 2023, it’s also useful to compare Ukraine aid to spending on domestic priorities. And, frankly, there’s no comparison. Even by the bill’s own accounting, spending on Ukraine dwarfs spending on most domestic priorities. For example, in the same sentence that Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee responsible for releasing the omnibus bill, announced the massive increase in Ukraine aid, he made clear that this was around $4 billion more than “communities across the country recovering from drought, hurricanes, flooding, wildfire, [and] natural disasters” would receive.

Perhaps most tellingly, if Ukraine were a U.S. state it would rank 11th in terms of the amount of federal funding it receives, according to government spending data. In other words, in the past 12 months Ukraine has been awarded more U.S. taxpayer dollars than 40 U.S. states.

While pundits from across the ideological spectrum proclaim there is no “blank check” for Ukraine Americans should, at the very least, discuss just how big of a check we’re willing to write, particularly with American households reeling from soaring inflation and a stagnating economy that may be headed into recession in 2023. 

The question is not whether the United States should support Ukraine, the question is how much Washington should support Ukraine in the months and possibly years to come. While the United States should support Ukraine as it continues to defend itself from Putin’s reckless invasion, it is well past time that Americans had a genuine conversation about just how much U.S. taxpayers should pay for this support.

Nelson Akira Ishikawa/shutterstock
Analysis | Europe
Matt_gaetz_50042428901-scaled
Gaetz speaking at a Donald Trump event in June 2020 (Source: Gage Skidmore)
Gaetz speaking at a Donald Trump event in June 2020 (Source: Gage Skidmore)

Bipartisan effort to ban transfer of cluster munitions fails

QiOSK

A bipartisan amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act which would have banned the transfer of cluster munitions introduced was defeated on the floor on Wednesday. The amendment, introduced by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), was rejected by a vote of 160 - 269. It was the latest in a series of Congressional efforts to reverse the Biden administration’s July decision to provide Kyiv with the controversial weapon.

“These cluster bombs are indiscriminate," Gaetz said on the House floor Wednesday. "They've killed tens of thousands of people... and when this is all done, we'll be right back here on the floor appropriating money to de-mine the cluster bombs that we're now sending, which seems ludicrous to me."

keep readingShow less
Ukraine-Poland row exposes history, limits of devotion
Credit: Polish President Andrzej Duda (Shutterstock/BikerBarakuss) and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky (Shutterstock/Oleksandr Osipov)

Ukraine-Poland row exposes history, limits of devotion

QiOSK

The vitriolic dispute between Poland and Ukraine brings out some aspects of the West’s approach to the war in Ukraine that the Ukrainian government would do well to study carefully.

The dispute originated in charges by Poland and other central European governments that Ukraine’s greatly increased grain exports to Europe — a consequence of the Russian closure of the Black Sea to Ukrainian maritime trade — were flooding European markets and depressing prices for Polish and other farmers.

keep readingShow less
Colombia’s Petro: Let's bury the violent drug war for good
Gustavo Petro gestures during his swearing-in ceremony at Plaza Bolivar, in Bogota, Colombia August 7, 2022. REUTERS/Luisa Gonzalez

Colombia’s Petro: Let's bury the violent drug war for good

Latin America

The American public almost unanimously agrees that the nation’s War on Drugs has been a huge failure. Now, South American leaders have a plan to form an alliance with key nations to initiate a new, non-violent approach to drug crime. This is a critical opportunity for the Biden administration to combat organized crime while regaining geopolitical credibility by promoting peace.

Since the United States’ War on Drugs began more than five decades ago, the nation has spent over a trillion dollars enforcing drug policies domestically since 1971.

keep readingShow less

Ukraine War Crisis

Latest