Congress will have spent nearly $100 billion on Ukraine war once $1.7T omnibus bill is enacted

President Biden and the Democrat-led Congress have appropriated about $48 billion for Ukraine since the Russian invasion began in February not counting the $45 billion in the spending bill passed by the Senate on Thursday.

Congress will have allocated nearly $100 billion in total to the Ukraine war once the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill is signed into law.

President Biden and the Democrat-led Congress have appropriated about $48 billion for Ukraine since the Russian invasion began in February. That figure does not count the $45 billion in the massive spending bill that the Senate passed Thursday ahead of a Friday deadline, when the week-long temporary government funding bill Congress passed last week expires.

The Council on Foreign Relations has reported that as of mid-December U.S. spending on the Ukraine war stood at about $48 billion, which included humanitarian, financial, and military support.

"Heading into 2022, U.S. foreign assistance was driven by various priorities of the Biden administration, including combating climate change, responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, and countering authoritarianism," according to the CFR report.

"But since Russia's invasion in February, Ukraine has become far and away the top recipient of U.S. foreign aid," the report says. "It's the first time that a European country has held the top spot since the Harry S. Truman administration directed vast sums into rebuilding the continent through the Marshall Plan after World War II."

CFR found that "much of the aid has gone toward providing weapons systems, training, and intelligence that Ukrainian commanders need to defend against Russia, which has one of the world's most powerful militaries."

In fiscal year 2022 alone, the U.S. piled $1.4 trillion onto the national debt, which is now climbing toward $32 trillion.

People love to complain about sending money and weapons to Ukraine when the $96 billion is actually chump change compared to the rest of Congressional spending about which they hardly mention or complain.

Many of these people do not realize that these US weapons were designed to defeat and destroy Russia’s military. But to them, using them to do that is somehow wrong when some other country uses them for their intended purpose.

Would they feel better if American troops were manning them? No. They’d complain about that too.

Do any of them understand that Russia was in large part, even directly responsible for killing 100,000 US troops in Korea and Vietnam in the same sort of proxy wars?

How many of them would have complained when Nixon sent massive aid to Israel during the 6 Day War? Do they understand that without that aid, Israel would have ceased to exist on the 7th day, and by the end of the following week, the Arab armies would have exterminated most of the Israeli population?

Do they understand that what the Arabs would have done to the Jews of Israel, is what the Russians would do to the Ukrainians? Afterward, with 40 million murdered Ukrainians would they all be busy washing their hands and complaining about the temperature of the water?

Or is America now all about money?

Should we object to spending $100 billion in a proxy war against Russia on behalf of Ukraine on the basis of the financial cost alone?

Quite apart from whether or not we want to be involved at all, we should put the $100 billion cost of our proxy war in Ukraine into perspective. Our current deficit is running about $1.6 trillion and it is likely to nearly double by the end of 2023 because federal revenues are decreasing, federal revenues are destined to decrease further because the lag effect of increased interest rates imposed by the Fed, because of a deepening recession, and because of rapidly increasing entitlement costs. It will get worse as the absent bubble built by the Fed bursts or at least deflates.

The bulge in the federal deficit might well reach catastrophic proportions beyond the Fed's capacity to contain it. In other words, the sheer cost of financing the deficit and rolling over the federal debt will be so invasive that nothing will be left for defense or other expenses or even for entitlements. Therefore, the Fed is likely to pivot and return to printing money.

In this scenario it is not unlikely that our defense budget will have to be cut or we will be in the throes of increasingly intractable inflation.

Therefore, one school of thought says, stop the spending, stop the spending in Ukraine and return to fiscal sanity of our grandparents. This is understandingly very appealing to us conservatives but it is time we understood that it is politically impossible in today's environment, full stop. The fiasco in the Senate should make that point undeniably clear.

Rather, one might ask, in an era of diminishing American power generated by our own profligacy that forces us into either devastating recession or equally devastating inflation, are we getting good bang for our 100 billion bucks spent in Ukraine? If we fail to support Ukraine now, when we have raised the stakes so high, raised them in sight of our adversaries like China, is it fiscally prudent to pull the rug out from Ukraine now? Are we not inviting greater threats (at immeasurably high cost) from China in the future if we do?

Are we not debilitating Russia as a military power for generations to come. Are we not doing it while we have the resources at a very cheap cost when one balances the present cost against our overall defense budget and our future fiscal weakness?

So we are left with a very painful choice, should we persist in a war in which we had, repeat had, very few critical national interests but now have invested our way into having very large and portentous national interests at stake, or should we save $100 billion, as well as the undoubted next round of expenses, but suffer the inevitable consequences when we expose ourselves to the world, and China, that we are committing another Afghanistan

At this point those who reply here will tell us that the answer is quite obvious. Either way, it is not.

It’s not the Cold War anymore. If you’re going to being up Korea and Vietnam, what’s stopping us from continuing to hate any other country we’ve fought in the past yet are nominally allies with now?

Here’s the big picture: given that this is another ethnic conflict between Slavs, what compelling national interest did America have in intervening on behalf of one side or another? Given the last 20 years of military adventurism to questionable (at best) results, you’d trust the current crew in Washington or the Pentagon to manage another conflict against a nuclear power?

Furthermore, the methods utilized are simply repulsive. There’s no question of public debate over whether we should be in a formal military alliance with Ukraine, spelling out our obligations and duties; no public debate over whether war should actually be declared against Russia (because let’s face it, we pretty much are clandestinely fighting them now, given that Ukraine has all but admitted it’s America’s proxy); nope, it’s just a matter of voting for more money and more weapons to be sent overseas thousands of miles away. After all, so long as it’s Ukrainians dying instead of Americans, what does it matter if weakens the Russkies, right? It’s ghoulish and dishonorable.

But on a gut level, I think it’s simpler. You have a trillion-plus omnibus bill that explicitly included language that would FORBID money from being spent on border security. They fought tooth and nail against Trump’s wall, claiming it was too expensive. Yet the uniparty thinks nothing of sending billions overseas; it thinks nothing of spending money on border security for OTHER nations. You have a political amd bureaucratic class that will spend whatever it takes to try and keep other countries indentured to the American dollar, even as the cultural fabric of our homeland continues to crumble.

When the uniparty sees fit to prioritize money to a corrupt country, while forbidding money to be spent for the general welfare and common good of their own citizens; when the uniparty has signalled in more ways than one that they HATE traditionalists and conservatives...is it any surprise that people simply get fed up?

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