If as expected it passes the House in votes scheduled for this weekend, it would likely speed through the Senate and be signed into law by dementia-ridden puppet Joe Biden sometime next week.
The bill, which has been up for an approval vote for months, would allocate another approximately $61 billion to the war budget to keep the Ukraine war and looting going even though there is no plan either for victory for the Zelensky gang or for peace. It would also provide approximately $26 billion to reward Israel’s ongoing genocidal slaughter of the Palestinian people in Gaza, with some allocated for further Israeli military interventions against Palestinians in lawful West Bank settlements. Another $8.12 billion is for military aid and other foreign funding in the Indo-Pacific region. None of the money will make the world any safer or promote peace and most of it will be looted by the criminals who control the U.S. government.
The $61 billion for Ukraine includes $23 billion for restocking U.S. defense manufacturers whose weapons and other munitions were shipped to Ukraine over the last months under special emergency authorizations from the federal government, amounts which were legally allowed to go without even notifying Congress they were on their way.
Roughly $12 billion of the amount goes to Ukraine in the form of a financial loan, which is provided to President Volodymyr Zelensky with few if any strings attached to how it is spent.
That loan could be forgiven and written off on the federal balance sheet, depending on who wins the presidential election this fall. Regardless, it is unlikely to ever be repaid.
The remaining $26 billion of the Ukraine budget package, after the American military contractors get their own $26 billion payback and the loan is separated out, is understood to be mostly about ammunition currently in short supply among Ukraine’s ground forces. This includes the 155 mm shells used by their NATO-supplied howitzers, and rockets and other munitions to support their medium-range rockets and related artillery.
The money for Ukraine comes at a time of intensive lobbying by officials such as Secretary of State Antony Biden who has been warning for some time that Ukraine’s military forces are floundering with mostly no forward progress on their part against their Russian adversaries. This despite that Ukraine has become particularly aggressive in running drone attacks which are extending far across the border with Russia. Also, for months now Moscow’s military forces have been successful in pushing forward against Ukraine’s troops.
Yesterday Blinken warned Congressional Representatives that if they did not approve the aid package currently up for votes in the House that “there is a real risk it will arrive too late” for Ukraine to keep the war going with Russia.
The Department of Defense advocates for the Ukraine aid package have been warning for months what might happen to Ukraine if the long-delayed aid package were not to be granted.
“This doesn’t go well for Ukraine over time without a supplemental, and it could lead to potential collapse,” a senior U.S. official speaking confidentially for the Department of Defense as the aid package was relaunched in the House about a month ago. “But here’s the bottom line: Even if Ukraine holds on, what we really are saying is that we are going to leverage countless lives in order to do that.”
CIA Director William Burns said around the same time during a Congressional hearing about the aid that the amount of territory Russian forces could take from Ukraine would be “significant”, if the package was not approved.
Zelensky declared during the same period that munitions in Ukraine were now so scarce that its military forces were “rationing” rocket shells, to make best use of what they have.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the United States has authorized over $44 billion of foreign aid for Ukraine, mostly to support the war. If approved, the $60 billion of new aid either sent directly to the country or used to reimburse previously spent emergency authorizations of aid would increase that by approximately another 1.5 times.
Assuming the Ukrainian aid package is granted, it will join another €50 billion (US $53 billion) in Ukraine military aid all 27 members of the European Union voted to authorize in February 2024.
The Department of Defense says they have primed their military weapons supply chain so that Ukraine could have access to new weapons within less than a week, after the bill is approved. A substantial part of that military materiel is also stocked at multiple U.S.-owned weapons depots in NATO countries within Europe.
A report issued last month by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) on military aid to Ukraine exposes how little tracking the Dept. of Defense (DoD) does with the weapons. It stated, "DOD does not have quality data to track delivery of defense articles to Ukraine" and discloses that the Pentagon lies about weapons delivery. Not only does the DoD not actually track what it is sending Ukraine it also does not track how or where it is used. It allows Ukraine to self-report its usage without any verification.
The $26 billion to support Israel which is included in the bill includes $17 billion in what are referred to as both defensive and offensive weapons. The remaining $9 billion is allocated for humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza. That was inserted in the bill in such a large number because House Democrats, who have grown far more critical of the rising murder toll of innocent Palestinians in Gaza. The Democrats are also watching carefully as protests against funding the genocide are dragging down support for their entire party.
Whether any of the $9 billion in humanitarian aid will ever make it to Gaza is an open question. Months after having been ordered to do so by the International Court of Justice, and several months after protestations by multiple nations around the world and the United Nations to increase the flow of aid into the country, Israel continues to find new ways to restrict aid coming into the region as famine grows widespread across most of Gaza. As a P.R. stunt, the U.S. did dump expired military rations on Palestinians by air drop, killing and injuring many.
The $8.12 billion of aid for the Indo-Pacific region includes funding to keep Taiwan armed against potential threats from China. It also supports some monies for key military partners of the U.S. throughout that part of the world, including to assist Japan in setting up U.S. defense equipment manufacturing, building counter-threats to North Korea, and support for the Philippines in its currently far overmatched attempt to stand up even to Chinese Coast Guard ships and their water cannons, as Chinese bullies other nations in its land grabs in the South China Sea.
The House passed its procedural vote on this aid package by a wide bipartisan majority of 316 to 94 yesterday.
It is expected to be voted on for full approval by the entire House sometime on April 20.
The U.S. federal debt is currently at $34.5 trillion.