Bankrupting the USA to Bankroll WWIII
(October 25, 2022) — We have an utterly corrupt Federal government: the Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary branches are completely beholden to special interests and are controlled by incompetent ideologues who are bought and sold.
The $50 billion dollars we give Ukraine — which moves us towards World War 3 and nuclear war — could build 1,100 new high schools in the US, which would teach 1,100,000 students.
The $65 billion we have spent on Ukraine to date would provide $3400 to every college student in the US.
Steven Starr is an associate of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
With GOP Critics of Ukraine Aid Poised to Gain Seats in Congress, Dems Look to Lock-in a Huge Military Assistance Package
Dan De Luce, Julie Tsirkin and Scott Wong / NBC News
(October 20, 2022) — Amid concerns that a new Congress could take a more skeptical view of aid to Ukraine, lawmakers from both parties are looking to lock in billions of dollars in military assistance to Kyiv before newly elected members are sworn in in January, according to a lawmaker and congressional staffers.
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, who is poised to take over as speaker if the GOP wins a majority in the House in the November midterm elections, warned this week that his fellow party members are “not going to write a blank check to Ukraine.”
With that threat to Ukraine aid looming, the bipartisan idea under consideration would use a government funding bill during the lame-duck session after the midterms to secure a much higher level of military and other assistance than prior aid packages for Ukraine, according to the lawmaker and the aides.
Congress last month approved $12 billion in military and economic aid to Ukraine, but the package being contemplated would be dramatically larger, the sources said.
The amount would be enough “to make sure [Ukraine] can get through the year,” a Republican senator with knowledge of the matter told NBC News. “It’ll make the $12 billion look like pocket change.”
The new aid package, which most likely would be part of an omnibus spending bill, could be within the range of roughly $50 billion,congressional aides and a source close to the Ukraine government said. The Biden administration has not yet made a formal request for new funding.
Congress has allocated a total of $65 billion in funding to Ukraine since Russia attacked the country in February.
‘Put Your Own Oxygen Mask On’
Many Republican candidates endorsed by former President Donald Trump have questioned the amount of U.S. aid delivered to Ukraine to help it fend off Russian forces, which invaded the country in February. They argue that the U.S. has more pressing domestic problems, that Ukraine’s fate is not tied to U.S. national interests and that European allies should be delivering a larger share of the weapons and other assistance to Kyiv.
On Thursday evening, President Joe Biden said of Republicans, “They said that if they win they’re not likely to fund, to continue to fund Ukraine.”
“These guys don’t get it. It’s a lot bigger than Ukraine. It’s Eastern Europe. It’s NATO. It’s really serious, serious consequential outcomes.”
House conservatives argue America needs to shore up its southern border and address the illegal immigration before worrying about Ukraine’s border with Russia.
“My constituents are saying, ‘Why are we more worried about Ukraine’s borders than we are about America’s borders?’ My constituents are not sitting there going, ‘Gosh, we have to save Ukraine’s borders,’” Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, a member of the conservative Trump-aligned Freedom Caucus, said in an interview.
Like Davidson, conservative Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Fla., said her heart breaks for the Ukrainian people, but she has not voted for recent Ukraine aid packages and isn’t inclined to do so next year if Republicans take control of the House, as most polls predict.
“I liken it to the airline videos they do before you take off: You need to put your own oxygen mask on before helping others,” Cammack, a member of the Homeland Security Committee, told NBC News. “And I just don’t think as a legislator that I could, in good conscience, support billions and billions of funding going overseas when we have such dire needs here.”
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