Biden asks Congress for $40 billion to support Ukraine, replenish US disaster aid and bolster border
Biden asks Congress for $40 billion to support Ukraine, replenish US disaster aid and bolster border
Biden still owes us $600 from his campaign promise lol
Listen here jack
Listen Fat
1200
Please Jack, another $40 million or Lockheed Martin is gonna JFK me.
How about 40 billion to support getting some bitches..... on a Single Payer Healthcare program.
Y’all bitches deserve hella healthcare but like… gotta do war and stuff I guess
hell yeah border fascism
Sure, we could end child poverty with a snap of our fingers, but what if we stoked the flames of global conflict so we could privatize and exploit the poorest country in Europe? All it costs is their dead children!
I'm not seeing this in the article. Is it from somewhere else?
Is this actual money in this case or is this more designated monetary amounts of goods, ie the worth of the guns and tanks and other things we've been giving them that were just collecting dust over here?
Because that's what most of the past monetary support was. No actual money was involved and so didn't really cost us anything.
the worth of the guns and tanks and other things we’ve been giving them that were just collecting dust over here?
Use of reserves motivates replacement. Just because you're giving them weapons that were produced in the past, and therefore whose (production) cost has already been incurred, doesn't mean that occurs in a vacuum. With stock running low, contemporary money goes in to replenishing that stock. In effect, there's no difference whether you send old or new equipment, because both incur costs in the present.
No actual money was involved and so didn’t really cost us anything.
It cost you exactly the amount it cost to produce them. Just because it was produced in the past, doesn't mean it was free. You paid for it X years ago, and are only now seeing it used. You paid for it. Moreover, you're now going to pay to replace it.
Except a bunch is old stock or overstock. The US was sitting on stockpiles of 203mm artillery rounds from the m110 that they would've had to pay someone to decommission, but it turns out that there's a soviet arty piece that can use them, and guess what? Ukraine has em. Not to mention they chronically overproduced M1A1 Abrams to the point that generals were begging for it to stop, simply because it would be more expensive to shut down and restart production than simply keep making tanks nobody wanted or needed. Plus, a significant portion of the old inventory was DESIGNED to blow up russian equipment. So the US is clearing out old shit, crippling the Russian military, and aiding a new democracy. The only downside is the fresh money that is probably going to be dumped into the MIC to fill those clean shelves, but (and this is basically NCDposting but here we go) the fact that the US can almost singlehandedly provide Ukraine the resources to hold out against fucking Russia for over a year and that equioment still being only a tiny fraction of their total might? Holy shit. Grab the money shovels boys.
Who are we kidding. You think they wouldn’t just create excess anyways?
your answer to your question
the worth of the guns and tanks and other things we've been giving them that were just collecting dust over here
Yea we just have billions of dollars of military equipment that popped out of thin air and of course will not be replenished in the next trillion dollar military budget.
You have trillions of dollars worth of military equipment from the cold war mothballed or in storage.
Most of it will never see use because it's outdated technology.
There are thousands of planes, tanks and miscellaneous vehicles just sitting out in the desert waiting to be scrapped or reactivated.
We have billions of dollars of military equipment that was made 10+ years ago and has been sitting around since then because we have no reason to use any of it.
To the point where military commanders are begging Congress to not make the military budget so big because it's being wasted on building more assets that aren't seeing any use.
Also what amounts are going where? Could be 39 billion to the border and 1 billion to Ukraine.
They intentionally lump these sums together so that they can distribute it as they desire. There is no reason to do this other then to hide funding.
I mean you could have just read the article.
13B for defense support and 8B in Humanitarian aid for Ukraine. 12B for federal disaster funding. ~7B for border funding, Fentanyl seizure Ops, and other stuff. So the 7B is vague, but it's a budget. You could probably just go to the house or senate page once it's released to get the details.
Can a single liberal offer a single example of how anything in the USA has improved since Biden became president?
(not a liberal, but) The infrastructure bill was mediocre but should lead to some improvements over the next decade or so.
They recently protected some indigenous land from uranium mining.
Ummmmmmm, anything else after the last 3 years or so?
improvements? Or the decay and collapse of the very walls around us will be a bit less bad?
Hi I'm a lib
He got rid of the horses
"Nothing would fundamentally change", and it hasn’t. At least he kept one campaign promise to his true constituents.
If you are actually interested in that you can follow the white house blog. Liberal or not it's a good idea to keep tabs on what the government is up to and the mainstream media/social media are garbage news sources these days.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/
Politics is actually boring AF so there's a reason most of us don't know what the government is actually doing all the time.
Are you suggesting we just let Putin take over Europe Nazi-style or is this comment unrelated to the article?
The annexations in Ukraine are illegal, but Russia annexing 5 oblasts and Ukraine being locked into a status as a neutral buffer state is not exactly a Hitlerian take-over of Europe.
I'm from Europe, this is fucking nonsense. Please can the US piss off and leave the rest of the world alone? You caused this in the first fucking place and then you act like you're on moral high ground by supporting the continuation of it with the deaths of tens of thousands of people over lines on a fucking map. It's abhorrent. Let's not get started on how the US very obviously blew up German infrastructure to cripple Europe and vassalise it. Don't pretend that any of your support is for any of our benefit thanks. You've literally ended european prosperity and fucked the continent for the next 50 years.
sure why not
If only?
Can we go ahead and just declare a state of emergency on the climate crisis? Or do we need the rest of the states to burn down as well? Shit's getting me frustrated
no that would be totalitarian, and too much money is made by the capitalists who own the politicians to ever do anything real about it.
you need a kind of central planning that the US hasn't done since world war 2, and you're not going to get it from liberals.
It'd take 37bn USD a year to end world hunger. I'm also sure that if you are a ghoul and don't care about that 100bn in investments would have a far bigger return on investment if they I dunno fixed their failing infrasctructure, used it to offer free healthcare, free education or literally anything. I've since stopped counting the amount of 'lethal aid' the USA has given but by now the USA could've combatted world hunger for about 4 years. Priorities I guess gotta pump up those MIC stock prices.
Remember when Elon pretended to care about this and tweeted at the UN about how he'd give billions if they could produce a report showing how they could use $6 billion to help alleviate world hunger problems? And then he didn't do anything except self-deal?
Brb printing 40 bil without taxing profits
Oh hey, it's a Parenti quote moment.
And when Kenneth Boulding gets up and he says—an economist, and you can see what—you can see what—you can see, when you get Britain people like Kenneth Boulding speaking so naïvely, you can see the troubles you get into, the swamps you go into, the baby talk—silliness you get into when you think without Marx, when you think without class analysis—and Kenneth Boulding says, one of America's leading economists, he says, "Empire is irrational because it costs more than what we get out of it," "the British—it costed them more in India than what they got out of it," "the American investment in the Philippines is only about three-and-a-half billion dollars, but we had to give them about six billion dollars in aid," "it costs us more than what we get out of it," and that's when you think without a class analysis, because as we know—as you're going to know before the evening's over— that it's very profitable, because the people who have the three billion dollar investment aren't the same ones as the people who pay the six billion.
Foreign aid is when the poor people of a rich country give money to the rich people of a poor country!
aid is good, but we need to stop dancing around and allow provided arms to be used cross border. or maybe itll take the deaths of another 250000 russian conscripts
Aid ukraine people not ukraine government.
Unironically the most logical comment here. Aid to Ukraine is good, but we need to commit and go balls deep. No silly half-measure, attack russia where it hurts, especially those annoying-ass bombers and missile/drone factories.
What are you an Army general? I kinda would prefer the government not give any more reason for a nuclear strike by Russia. Which is absolutely where we're trending if America starts dropping pretenses and begins directly arming incursions into Russian borders.
They buy these off china where iphones are made.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A political divide on the issue has steadily grown, with the Republican-led House facing enormous pressure to demonstrate support for the party’s leader, Donald Trump, who has been very skeptical of the war.
As a supplemental request, the package the White House is sending to Congress falls outside the budget caps both parties agreed to as part of the debt ceiling showdown earlier this year.
“I look forward to carefully reviewing the Administration’s request to make sure it is necessary and appropriate,” McConnell said in a statement, “to keep America safe, secure our borders, support our allies, and help communities rebuild after disasters.”
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., released a statement urging Congress to swiftly pass critical funding for disaster relief programs while separately considering military aid for Ukraine.
Members of Congress have repeatedly pressed Defense Department leaders on how closely the U.S. is tracking its aid to Ukraine to ensure that it is not subject to fraud or ending up in the wrong hands.
Now, though, House Speaker McCarthy is facing pressure to impeach Biden over unproven claims of financial misconduct and it’s not clear whether a quick show of support for Ukraine could cause political damage in what’s expected to be a bruising 2024 reelection campaign.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Squeeze ut all in one pckage so people have a hard time saying no because they would deny Ukraine help...
Still waiting for Biden to ask for $40 billion for US aid
Wait no more! https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/14/biden-administration-has-canceled-66-billion-in-student-debt.html
I'm frankly shocked conservatives are doing everything they can to prevent it!
Where is the off ramp here? Despite billions and constant propaganda Russia is not going to lose this war on the battlefield.
How much money and how many people are we going to just send to their deaths just because prolonging the conflict weakens an adversary to US.
It’s really sad :(
Russia will lose any day now. Their army has been routed and they're constantly fleeing the lines. Hundreds of thousands of Russians are dead or zero-summed while Ukraine has no casualties. Ukraine is marching towards Moscow and this war will end with Putin Putler shooting himself in the head! Slava Ukraini!
Inb4 anyone calls me a tankie for supporting Biden sending tanks to Ukraine.
(Sorry. I can't resist the urge to post Simpsons references)
We were in Iraq for 20 years despite it being so unpopular and illegal
The off ramp is whenever the defense contractors start losing money and it's not profitable anymore
Lol so never. They have a vested interest in keeping this a stalemate as long as possible. My tinfoil hat theory is the only reason Ukraine is barred from using weapons in Russia is that the US military industrial complex would love to see this drawn out for as long as possible. Every aid package is a boon to their stock price.
I am assuming you are an American, so I think you have sent no one.
Pretty much. All US veterans who have died in Ukraine were volunteers. Just about everything we've given Ukraine is old military equipment we don't need, and it accounts for such a small amount in the total budget while absolutely fucking the greatest threat to Europe at the moment. It might be the best ROI we've ever gotten from anything ever.
This is coming from someone who is extremely anti-war, but that doesn't make me anti-defend yourself.
Oddly enough the US makes it back in many ways as it's being fulfilled by US military contractors. So it's not as much of a loss financially as it seems. It's also geopolitically a good cause as bolstering support in Europe has netted a ton of contracts Russia was fulfilling for gas and coal. Ukraine is also a US ally and likely future member of both the EU and NATO, so it makes sense to support them when invaded for absolutely no rhyme or reason by pretty much the most consistent adversary of the US throughout modern history. But I'm sure whatever you said makes sense too.
We're not sending anyone to their death. Ukrainian soldiers are doing the fighting, not American ones.
If Russia doesn't lose on the battlefield, Putin will invade Poland next, and then one of the following happens:
Putin is Hitler with nukes. He's trying to start World War 3. We're trying to stop him before the conflict spirals out of control. If we fail, everybody dies.
We're not supporting Ukraine out of the goodness of our hearts. We're doing it to save our own asses.
NATO doesn’t respond, proves itself useless, and dissolves. Putin divides and conquers Europe, marching his army all the way to Portugal. Putin, emboldened, launches an attack on the US. Nukes fly. Game over.
That's assuming the EU won't respond, or for that matter Poland being incapable of pushing back Russia all by itself. There's about exactly one single reason why the Poles aren't parading on the Red Square right now: Because they're in NATO, which acts as a leash. Baltics pretty much have the same attitude but are smaller so they'd simply follow Poland. Finland would get pulled into it because of their own attitude and Estonia, and with them, without fail, Sweden. At which point Germany would have a hard time holding back and then it's guaranteed that the French will be in the fray, and that's presuming they wouldn't have been as soon as Poland lets loose because principle.
Now the US in its usual exceptionalism might be blissfully unaware of those dynamics, and the Kremlin because the FSB reports what the Kremlin wants to hear, but it's true nontheless. But in the end once the EU is involved the US will be, too, because the US can't countenance Europe doing something militarily without joining in. Reluctantly and in a limited fashion, probably, just as they're reluctant now. Germany has pretty much stopped trying to bully the US into providing more things because we've reached the limits of what the US will do (that is, Germany could pressure the US to deliver Abrams by tying Leos to the US also delivering tanks, but providing Taurus cruise missiles won't be tied to ATACMS because apparently that's a US red line).
We’re not sending anyone to their death. Ukrainian soldiers are doing the fighting, not American ones.
Mask off moment. Ukrainians aren't even people to you. Most of them are conscripts forced to be on the front line.
Ya know there's a country called Ukraine that's involved in this, right? They are people defending their country and they're going to do that with or without US support. And Ukraine will win in the end. Russia doesn't have enough to successfully occupy Ukraine against an organized resistance which is where things could go without military aid from the west.
While a resistance would ultimately be successful, it would take a decade or more. And it's likely a Russian occupation of Ukraine would involve genocide. Do you want that?
Sending military aid isn't about trying to change the outcome of the war. Russia's defeat is inevitable. The military aid is about helping Ukraine defeat Russia sooner, without the need for a prolonged resistance campaign, and that reduces the loss of life.
When you say that Ukraine will defeat Russia do you mean Ukraine will occupy the Donbass and impose a government on them that those people don't want?
You do know that there's a region called Donbass that is involved in this right? And they've been fighting for their lives since 2014. Why don't you care about those people?
Why won't Russia stop the war?
Why did Vladimir Putin claim that Ukraine isn't a country?
Why does Russia purchase Iranian suicide drones, and launch drone and cruise missile attacks on Ukrainian cities every week?
Why do Russians want to kill all Ukrainians when they were considered brothers 2 years ago?
More money being pissed away on Ukraine? Wow. That Zalensky guy must have photos of a naked Biden with some White House aide or whatever. This is a joke and a massive abuse of US taxpayer money. When does this end? How is the US benefitting from this? Oh, we aren’t at all. Hmmm. I wonder if there is something behind the scenes going on here? Like some other motive? I mean, it’s the Biden’s….. sort of a shady track record.
And don’t gimme a bunch of whataboutisms either. Don’t care. This Ukraine thing is a farce. Enough. We’re done.
How is the US benefitting from this?
Draining the resources of geopolitical rival without dead troops, weapons exports and lucrative contracts for reconstruction.
You should read war is a racket https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html
The guy who wrote it, smedley butler, was a highly decorated major general
Capital loves war which is why the US has been at war for something like 92% of its miserable existence. Of course the average person gets fucked
How is the US benefitting from this?
well it's making europe reliant on US energy, for one (with all the ramifications that entails)
And getting NATO to 'pay their fair share'
to Northrop on top of itIt's kind of funny seeing these kind of comments on Lemmy and playing the "alt-right or tankie" game before you see someones instance.
What we as the west get from helping Ukriane, is soft power in that it sends a message to other dictators around the world that we won't just sit back and let them plough into another country, and while we might not start WW3 over it, we will support them to make it hard as possible for you.
It's kind of funny seeing these kind of comments on Lemmy and playing the "alt-right or tankie" game before you see someones instance.
huh, i see comments like yours and i think "lib moron" and then i don't give it another thought.
Maybe you should stop plowing into other countries yourselves, you bloodthirsty psychos.
No the message to other dictators is ‘be useful to us, or else’
that it sends a message to other dictators
What message is America sending to the dictators that we bankroll while they perform genocide using US equipment and training?
won't just sit back and let them plough into another country
Do you think the west has a genuine interest in consistently enforcing this or do you just not care when people you like do it?
Only white countries though, when it comes to black people and brown people you don't give a rats ass, there's still dictators all over the world that none of you even give a s*** about
That's fine but why are they banning socialist parties, integrating fascist paramilitaries into the army, and privatizing land? That all seems a little familiar.
Yeah we've really cultivated a lot of prestiege on this one, the west definitely hasn't absolutely embarrassed itself and unified large swathes of the world against it. And hey, it only took like three rounds of sabotaged peace talks and and multiple generations of Ukranians fed into a big novelty Northrop-Grumman branded meat grinder.
it sends a message to other dictators around the world that we won't just sit back and let them plough into another country,
You mean like the collective west did to Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya? Who's supposed to send the message to our dictators when it's time to stop?
we won't just sit back and let them plough into another country,
only WE plough into other countries USA! USA! USA!
You could say the same thing but with putin sending the message and it would be more acurate.
For some people, everything has to be a conspiracy. Logical, easily verifiable reasons for things can't possibly be the truth to them. Especially if it comes from the opposing political party, it is automatically false to them. Even if verifiable.
Honestly I wasn't sure of the benefit either, but your response makes so much sense. I don't know why there always has to be conspiracies for obvious stuff.
*Except if that country is Palestine. They can get ploughed
This is giving "the UN is an effective international governance body" energy.
We're giving Ukraine our table scraps that are too nice to toss, but too expensive to keep. They're using them to defeat a long-standing geopolitical foe at no costs to American lives.
Ukraine doesn't need dirt to get our help, this is the best money the US has spent since Lend-Lease.
The high energy prices mean its no longer profitable to run heavy industries in europe. So the us is cannibalizing some of german industry. Thats the profit the us gets.
Supporting free and democratic Ukraine is preferable to letting fascist Russia become neighbors with NATO.
I agree wholeheartedly with supporting Ukraine, but Russia has had a land border with NATO for twenty years at this point. They just pretend they don't so that they can cry "NATO expansionism!"
When does this end?
When Russia is defeated.
How is the US benefitting from this?
It's sending a message to authoritarians. Don't invade countries or we'll send the other country stuff to make it go badly for you. This has a chilling effect on authoritarians, making them refrain from this kind of activity. This improves global security, which results in better trade, which improves the global economy. The US being on the globe benefits from this.
Also, do you like how much you're paying for groceries? Could it be this war is causing a disruption in grain supply? You know that stuff that goes into bread, the feed that cows eat, etc? Yeah, I know people on the internet are all blaming their own governments (in basically every country, LOL) for high grocery prices, because no one wants to say that's it's Putin. Sure there is probably some assholes jacking up the prices more than necessary, but do you think all the corporations and all of the governments got together and decided to do this? Nope the inflation, the high grocery prices, it's because of Putin's bullshit.
Not to mention all of the influence campaigns Russia is running on the internet. You know where you're constantly being influenced by the internet towards burning down the capital of your own country? That's a disinformation campaign designed to destabilize NATO countries. Taking down Putin will lessen that buillshit. I say lessen because after seeing Russia's success other countries like China are getting in on that game now too. But one asshole at a time.
Don't invade countries or we'll send the other country stuff to make it go badly for you
Man I wish someone sent that message to the US before they invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, carpet bombed Syria and Libya, and funded various forms of jihadist militant groups for the past 20+ years.
There's exactly one county that's been toppling democracies and bankrolling dictators for almost a 100 years and it's
baby.And people were worried when CatholicSocialist got banned that we wouldn't hook any more whales
Imagine being an unironic NAFO loser.
yeah its definitely putin's fault everything is more expensive and not corporate greedy price-gouging. remember, everything is putin's fault! the west is perfect!
You know where you're constantly being influenced by the internet towards burning down the capital of your own country? That's a disinformation campaign designed to destabilize NATO countries.
Seeing how you NAFO psychos behave has actually completely convinced me that the only path forward is to burn DC (and Langley) to the ground and that NATO must be dismantled if there's ever going to be lasting peace. Congratulations.
It's sending a message to authoritarians. Don't invade countries or we'll send the other country stuff to make it go badly for you
Help i fucked up, I accidentally sent the stuff to the Saudis not the Yemenis who being invaded.
Fire's gettin low, better throw some more paper on it to keep it going.
Would you prefer that the world turn its back on Ukraine and let Russia continue to invade them without support?
Yeah, he would. There are lots of people who would rather bend over for Russia than think for one second. Putin has zero love for America and actively attacks our infrastructure and companies by sponsoring hackers. If you support Russia you are a traitor or an idiot.
Would you prefer that the world turn its back on Ukraine
Yes.
I'd prefer peace negotiations.
I personally dont give a fuck about Ukraine so yes. I give as much of a fuck for Ukraine as much as I give a fuck about whats going on in Sudan or Sri Lanka.
I. Dont. Care.
Those hundreds of billions of dollars are given to the banks to perpetuate this stupid war. Only ~5% of all the money donated to them has been humanitarian. The rest goes to the war machine.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby is a joke.
it's progressive to wage war right?
Russia is waging war. The US wants to support a free democratic country that borders NATO over a fascist invading country that's an adversary of NATO.
Why would US also support Turkey, Egypt, Israel or other dictatorship around the world?
Ukraine banned the largest opposition party in the legislature. How does that make it a free and democratic country? The truth is it's no more free and no more democratic than Russia.
Out of the numerous countries that the USA has invaded, couped, meddled in or intervened in, which ones have become free and democratic enough to your liking?
Lol. Where in the US state dept do you work? Imperialist balogne.
It’s honorable to help a sovereign nation protect itself against a power-hungry dictator
It’s honorable to help a sovereign nation protect itself against a power-hungry dictator
I agree, which is why it's so important to back the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics against the undemocratic power-hungry dictator Zelensky.
Yes it's honorable to wage a proxy war and use the lives of people thousands of miles away to further your own hegemony across the globe.
It certainly can be.
No it's not. Well, unless it's an anti-fascist war. But as much as Biden loves to say he's just like FDR, this war is no WW2.
Healthcare please
More trains please
Or anything to help with inflation, etc.