bimboeruption:
"I’m not a Russian propagandist.
I’m an American who loves this country and who loathes those who support draining its resources dry." Then you should love supporting Ukraine.
The US military budget is circa $850 billion and its number one purpose is to deter bad people from doing bad things -- that's what "Peace through Strength" is all about.
But deterrence sometimes fails and the world is chock full of hungry two-bit tin-horn dictators just waiting for a weakness they can exploit to invade and conquer their neighbors.
One of those is Russia's Vlad the Invader and in February 2022 he saw enough weakness, stupidity and corruption in our President to defeat the deterrence value of our military and so he invaded Ukraine, again.
Ukraine is what happens when we look weak, and deterrence fails.
So is the attack on Israel and the CCP threat against Taiwan.
They are all connected and related by perceptions of our weakness.
The War on Terror cost us around $8 trillion over 20 years, or roughly $400 billion per year.
Ukraine is costing circa $55 billion per year and much of that is obsolete stuff that would be scrapped eventually anyway.
The Federal deficit totaled $3 trillion over the past two years, all of it the result of massive Democrat vote-buying schemes.
If we simply eliminate all the grift and corruption, then there will be plenty of money to pay for the essentials of government, beginning with restoring the deterrence value of our national defense assets.
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It seems pretty clear from various comments that we have been saying we are giving Ukraine more than we actually are. Of course we need to separate military costs from human interest costs like running a government when tax income is down or supporting refugees. So how much of the $3 trillion mentioned in this comment are real expenses? Specifically, how much of the circa $55 billion a year to Ukraine has been real?
If we have already paid for tanks and other major equipment in past budget cycles, then we should only have to count the cost of shipping this pre-existing equipment and training the recipients as new money. If we are regularly paying for storing and maintaining this equipment in the US, then when we send it elsewhere we should be subtracting these savings from somewhere. This was made clear in the argument over cluster munitions. They were approaching elimination date, and now they are in Ukraine and we no longer pay for storage. Nor will we have to pay for deconstruction.
Since we also send equipment and other material foreign aid to Israel, South Korea and others, how much of our national debt is based on double billing, and how much is actually real. Do we really have over $20 trillion in national debt, or should these figures actually be recalculated to reflect real conditions? Are we actually paying interest on a huge national debt, or is some of this interest being misapplied? Are we paying interest on used military equipment given as foreign aid which was already paid for in a previous budget cycle?
It seems that large chunks of money/debt have been moving around in our treasury in a number of different administrations. This sounds like a topic for investigation that should concern us all, whether we are Republicans, Democrats, Independents, or some other organized/disorganized party. Are we kept in a state of fear by faulty accounting methods misused by opposing political parties? WHAT IS OUR TRUE NATIONAL DEBT???