Prayer is all we have left.
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In total, about $113.1 billion in funding for Ukraine was authorized in 2022, according to an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Most of that – about $67.1 billion – was for defense-related spending, the CRFB said. The other $46 billion included $26.9 billion for an economic support fund; $7.9 billion for international disaster assistance; $6.6 billion in assistance for refugees; $1.5 billion for assistance for Europe, Eurasia and Central Asia; plus another $3.1 billion for other nondefense spending.
The U.S. Agency for International Development has been coordinating with the Treasury Department to distribute authorized economic aid to Ukraine in tranches. In a report published on Feb. 17, USAID said it had so far provided $13 billion in “direct budget support” to the government of Ukraine, or “GoU” for short.
“This funding has helped the Ukraine pay the salaries of 618,000 educators, 517,000 health workers, and 56,500 first responders,” the report says. “It has also helped them to sustain critical healthcare services, meet its pension responsibilities for 9.8 million people, assist 1.3 million internally displaced persons, provide housing assistance to 4.1 million people, and provide social assistance to 240,000 low-income families and 480,000 persons with disabilities.”
That report did not say how much was spent on pensions, but a USAID spokesperson sent us another USAID report to Congress that indicated $4 billion of budget support for Ukraine was spent on pensions as of Nov. 30, 2022.
The bottom line: While the video of Biden talking about providing funding to pay Ukrainian pensioners may have caught some by surprise, the fact is that Biden made those comments BEFORE Congress approved the money months ago on a bipartisan basis.
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Update, Feb. 23, 2023: After we published this story, a USAID spokesperson responded to our request for more information. We updated this story to include the amount spent on pensions.