Last week, Congress voted to send $95 billion in additional aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
The largest portion was to Ukraine – $61 billion – after the Congress had previously approved $114 billion, for a total of $175 billion.
The total GDP of Ukraine in 2022 was $160.5 billion. In other words, we basically could have bought the whole country for less than we have sent them.
Of course, most of this money was approved due to the tremendous lobbying effort made and the big campaign contributions given by the giant defense contractors.
For many years now, as Eisenhower warned, almost all of our wars have been more about money and power than about any real threats to this country.
All giant bureaucracies, when it comes to money, just want more, more and more. And most members of Congress don’t seem to realize, or more likely don’t seem to care, that we are spending money we do not have.
It is almost impossible to humanly comprehend our $35 trillion national debt. And take a moment and try to comprehend how much this latest $95 billion foreign aid bill is.
One billion dollars could make 1,000 Americans millionaires immediately. One billion hours is equal to 114,000 years.
This latest $95 billion is equal to over $260 million each and every day.
The largest recipient, Ukraine, in addition to our $175 billion, has received over $53 billion from the countries of the European Union and at least $42 billion from the World Bank (and 17.5% of World Bank funds come from U.S. taxpayers).
As I pointed out in my March 4th column, Ukraine actually has had more money to fight this latest war than Russia has.
As of 2023, the total GDP of the U.S was $26.9 trillion. Russia’s GDP of $2.1 trillion is actually much smaller than California’s GDP and about equal to that of Texas.
Just prior to this war with Russia, Ukraine’s government was rated as one of the most corrupt in the world. We would probably be sickened if we could ever really find out how much of this aid has been or will be wasted or stolen.
And as for giving billions in additional aid to Israel and Taiwan, I would ask – why? Both countries are much stronger per capita and in relation to GDP than the U.S. with our humongous debt.
The votes in the House were 311 to 112 on the Ukraine aid; 366 to 58 on aid to Israel; and 385 to 34 on the aid to Taiwan.
On the aid to Ukraine, a majority of Republicans (112) voted no, with all the Democrats voting yes. The Democrats in Congress don’t hesitate to spend money on almost everything.
Only two Tennessee Republicans – David Kustoff of Memphis and Chuck Fleischmann of Chattanooga – voted to send more billions down the Ukrainian rathole. Both Tennessee senators voted against the final bill.
The Congressional Budget Office says interest payments on our national debt will total $870 billion this year and $951 billion next year.
The top one percent already pay almost half of U.S. income taxes. Increases in corporate taxes will be passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices for everything.
Thus, most of the increased spending this Congress is doing, in foreign aid and everything else, and in Biden’s shameless campaign of forgiving student loans, will be paid for by printing more money and by even more federal borrowing.
Germany, in the 1920s, was probably the most educated country in the world. Yet, read this from the biography of theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
“For Germany, 1923 was disastrous. The German mark, which had begun to slide two years earlier, went into free fall. In 1921 it dropped to 75 marks to the dollar; the next year to 400; and by early 1923 it plunged to 4,000. But this was only the beginning of sorrows…. The resultant economic turmoil would make the bleak conditions of a few months earlier look like the good old days: by August a dollar was worth one million marks; and by September, August seemed like the good old days. By November 1923 a dollar was worth about four billion German marks.”
In the last 12 months, people from 150 countries have flooded to the U.S. because their governments have adopted socialist policies that have destroyed their economies.
Reprinted with author’s permission from The Knoxville Focus.
