Posted on 07/13/2023 12:53:29 PM PDT by Right Wing Vegan
Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, have introduced legislation to prevent the Defense Department from making more accounting errors when sending aid to Ukraine. In June, the Pentagon revealed it had overvalued aid it provided by $6.2 billion, allowing the DOD to send more.
The Pentagon said the accounting errors can be attributed to using the replacement cost of the equipment, not its book value. The book value is depreciated because the equipment is used and sitting in storage. The replacement cost is higher because everything has to be purchased brand new.
“The so-called ‘valuation errors’ around U.S. aid to Ukraine is a transparent attempt to bypass Congress for additional funds, while continuing to prioritize Ukraine over more vital U.S. interests, including deterring China in the Pacific,” Sen. Hawley said in a statement.
The bill would require the Biden administration to calculate the cost of aid by using the equipment’s purchase price plus any improvements, modifications, or how much it costs to replace, whichever is greater.
“You realize that we’re spending way more money than I think the Biden administration or the American people are fully aware of. So that’s a problem. Because if we don’t know how much we’re spending, how can we possibly evaluate whether the cost benefit calculus makes sense for the American people,” Sen. Vance told Straight Arrow News.
In a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Hawley, Vance and other Republican senators said, “By using creative accounting to conceal the actual cost of supporting Ukraine, you appear to be circumventing the American people’s elected representatives. Congress, not DOD, possesses the power of the purse.”
They asked him to answer questions including:
How does DOD justify the use of net book value vice replacement costs when the equipment given to Ukraine must be replaced with new equipment? How is DOD calculating the net book value of equipment given to Ukraine?
The senators want the answers by Aug. 10.
Austin: "we'll do whatever the heck we want and there's nothing you can do about it"
The Grayzone conducted an independent audit of US funding for Ukraine and discovered a series of wasteful, highly unusual expenditures the Biden administration has yet to explain.
Zelensky is a phony. America is being drained dry. We are being fleeced.
The war/welfare checks are far, far more than being reported…......
including scarce US Social Security funds going to Ukraine.
US taxpayers may be shocked to learn that as their families grappled with fears of Social Security’s looming insolvency, the Social Security Administration in Washington sent $4.48 million to the Kiev government in 2022 and 2023 alone.
In another example of bizarre spending, USAID paid off $4.5 billion worth of Ukraine’s sovereign debt through payments made to the World Bank — all while Congress went to loggerheads over America’s ballooning national debt.
Beneficiaries of USAID’s Ukraine aid:
<><>Polish NATO lobbyists,
<><>a private equity firm,
<><>rural Kenyans,
<><>a TV station in Toronto
<><>$21.8 billion to Ukraine throughout fiscal years 2022 and 2023, roughly 41 percent of the 53.4 billion it spent during that period.
<><>Mysteriously, a portion of USAID funding earmarked for Kiev was sent to Kenya and Ethiopia via other agencies, with the award description stating projects in Africa were “partially funded with response funds and Ukraine supplemental funds.”
<><>USAID sent $4.5 billion to Ukraine via the World Bank to pay off Kiev’s debt and fund various social programs, including government pensions.
<><>USAID made a total of $21 billion worth of direct payments to the World Bank in fiscal years 2022 and 2023 (9.1 Billion and 11.9 Billion, respectively), more money than all of the funding Washington sent to the bank between fiscal years 2008 and 2021 combined.
<><>The $4.5 billion allocated for Ukraine funded programs directed by the bank’s International Development Association and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
<><>USAID supplied a $1 billion grant to the World Bank’s International Bank for Reconstruction and Development to subsidize projects “Ukraine cannot fund at this time.”
<><>USAID has supplied $20 million to “Miscellaneous Foreign Awardees” since February 2020. Recipients include a Polish think tank called the Casimir Pulaski Foundation, a Toronto-based Ukrainian TV channel, a collection of Ukrainian “anti-corruption” organizations, and other groups listed in the screenshot below. These awards were issued on top of $26 million worth of funds USAID sent these groups between 2016 and the February 2022 war escalation.
<><>USAID allocated $500,000 for the Casimir Pulaski Foundation in 2023 to fund a program dedicated to “advanc[ing] U.S. foreign policy objectives by supporting economic growth, agriculture and trade; global health; and democracy, conflict prevention and humanitarian assistance” in Ukraine. The funds were earmarked “to strengthen the International Center for Ukrainian Victory (ICUV) initiative in implementing international advocacy campaigns to keep high levels of international solidarity with Ukraine.”
……and much, much more…..
Q. Well which is it?
Zelensky is whining about NATO entering the critical fourth quarter of Zelensky’s “war of survival” against Russia.
A mere couple of months ago, Zelensky was sure “Russia was going to splinter” into pieces after being “devastated by the strength” of the NATO-backed supplied and trained Ukrainian army.
A. Looks like his wife saw a-n-o-t-h-e-r multi-million estate she wants.
The US is being bled dry, when do Americans realize EVERYTHING about Ukraine stinks? The six billion $$$ Nuland is on record stating that was sent to the Ukies from 2014….and since the war 100 billion $$$….more money than was sent to US’s States.
Only one conclusion:
Ukraine 1991-2023, RIP, the quicker the better, for many, many reasons.
“The US is being bled dry”
LOL. All the aid sent to Ukraine over the last year and a half wouldn’t cover our entitlement expenditures for a single week.
LOL. All the aid sent to Ukraine over the last year and a half wouldn’t cover our entitlement expenditures for a single week.
———
So that makes it acceptable? No, it does not…..Ukraine appears now to be our 51st State, I didn’t vote for that, you didn’t either.
“So that makes it acceptable?”
It makes your argument that we are being “bled dry” by these expenditures completely laughable and transparently deceptive. If you really cared about the USA being bled dry, you would be focused on one of the two areas of expenditures that actually matter, but you’re not. So obviously, you are using this argument cynically and not seriously.
.
It’ll be defeated.
They love War spending, Love Joe Biden and Chris Wray
.
I don’t understand this.
Accounting errors , or different calculations of values of property, do not affect the cash in the bank.
So it confuses me that somehow we’re trying to say we can spend more money in Ukraine because of an accounting error.
Talking about replacement cost or depreciated values of equipment does not affect how much money you have in the bank to spend on something.
With the Democrat Party in complete control of the DOJ and FBI, that's pretty much the case.
Even as someone who supports aid to Ukraine I cringed at this blatant lying precisely because it shows they are moving more and more openly to a dictatorship, not even requiring Congressional authorization of funds. Even if the House cut off funding for the Fed Gov, I'm sure Yellen would talk to the Federal Reserve and they'd just print money and make "emergency" loans under some pretense. We really no longer live in a republic.
They authorize spending, not pallets of cash. So the aid to Ukraine is deducted from the authorized amount as a cost. Lower the cost and suddenly there is more authorized spending available.
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