“but the White House can give $55 billion to Africa without asking ?”
People don’t seem to understand how this works. We’re talking about Foreign Military Sales. (FMS.) Not one penny of that money is actually going overseas. It’s the products produced by that money that move. Let’s say I have a warehouse full of Stinger missiles. They are on my books at x value. The government gives them to Ukraine. The government gives me X dollars for them. (Most likely they have been sitting in a government warehouse, but maintenance and control are likely under contract to my theoretical company.)
In the case or Stinger Missiles here’s what’s likely to happen next. I had a line that produced them and has been shut down for the last twenty years. Now, periodically, during the time I had those missiles under contract I presented proposals, some of which may have been accepted wherein I took the missiles and refurbished them. Now, the government may come back and ask for a proposal to restart the production line.
I pull together an engineering team and we go over the design to figure out what parts need to be redesigned. As most of the component parts for the Stinger have been out of production for decades this is not a trivial task.
But the point is, the money supposedly given to Ukraine isn’t happening. All of that money is circulating inside what we call the Military Industrial Complex. Like most things, this is a good thing and a bad thing, depending on a huge number of aspects and where you stand when you view them.
“But the point is, the money supposedly given to Ukraine isn’t happening. All of that money is circulating inside what we call the Military Industrial Complex.”
...all because of UKRAINE. But nice try!