Posted on 04/29/2024 7:10:08 AM PDT by Mount Athos
Ukraine last week got a vital $61 billion lifeline from the United States. But it still needs a medium-term funding plan to withstand Russia’s onslaught.
A multi-year funding plan would have several benefits. For a start, it would provide some insurance against U.S. political swings. It would also boost Ukrainian morale and give Western arms manufacturers greater confidence to ramp up production.
Ukraine is straining every sinew to hold the line against Russia, an adversary whose $2 trillion, opens new tab economy was 11 times bigger than its own last year.
How much Kyiv needs in future depends on what sort of war it fights. A defensive campaign would cost less than an attempt to expel Russia from large chunks of land. But given that the Kremlin is ramping up its own military expenditure, Ukraine in future will probably need at least as much every year as the 88 billion euros its allies allocated in 2023.
Western countries may relax now that the U.S. Congress has finally agreed $61 billion in aid. This would be a mistake. Ukraine’s allies need to build on last week’s good news to extend a more ambitious lifeline.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Now they are talking about ramming through an irreversible massive MULTI-YEAR funding plan that would put us on the hook for 10 years. One that Trump somehow could not reverse. 88 billion times 10 is... almost a Trillion dollars.
Enjoy the ridiculous arguments that this won't really cost us a thing because it's a "loan" and the money is spent in the USA. Great why not triple the amount then. We won't see a dime in repayment
Those cronies in DC who haven’t been paid off yet are getting antsy - like hyenas, they want their share of the carcass
“Ukraine’s $61 Billion lifeline is not enough”
Of course it’s not enough, Ukraine needs weapons that won’t be assembled until 2 to 5 years from now (for many reasons, including suppliers are now shopping malls and pierced-up kids that don’t know which end of a screwdriver to hold).
No doubt the Zeepers here have a solution to this issue, or they wouldn’t have tried to challenge Russia and now Russia and China.
What an asinine statement!
Ukraine needs more soldiers! Let’s send ALL of Congress that voted for funds to Ukraine to fight for the cause they believe in.
Uncle Sugar is broke
Takes 18 years to produce a soldier. I wonder if the Ukes have enough time to do that before they run out of bodies?
He thinks they want Ukraine to win.
They don’t. They just want to blame Ukraine’s loss on MAGA.
Oh Goodie!
Let's Lock In Forever War, and make it impossible for Future US Leaders and Legislators to stop this insanity.
This Ukraine funding deal has a “loan” component
but it is not a “Loan” as honest people define “loans.”
Speaker Johnson’s Ukraine Foreign Aid Package is another contrived “no-repay loan” like Hunter Biden got from his sugar-daddy who, as a Biden donor, happened to have $60 million handily laying around (like most working class people do /s):
<><>the Ukraine “loan” allows Joe to “Forgive” 50% of the billions Nov 15, when Trump wins,
<><>or lets Biden forgive 100% of “the Loan” Later On (If he pulls off a 2nd election steal)
Rotflol......the billion dollar joke’s on us.....we been suckered again.
Zelensky knows that cunning routine. Its already been tried.
Few years back, billions more of our tax dollars to Israel
were handed out———designated as a do-good foreign aid “loan.”
But when it came time to pay up, Israel got its lobbies to manhandle Congress.
The battered, bruised Congress sap-happily passed a law
.........saving its collective political ***es.......
quickly turning the foreign aid “loan” billions into a “gift.”
When conservatives in Congress pressed the Biden admin to provide the real cost of the Ukraine war in Jan 2023, the lawmakers estimated the U.S. had spent “a minimum of $114 billion.”
<><>Now, with added OMB information, Cong Vance and company estimate the current total to Ukraine amounts to at least $125 billion—$14 billion over what the OMB had previously claimed.
<><>That’s not all.....Biden could give Ukraine another $4B billion via weapons transfers from US stockpiles under Presidential Drawdown Authority.
<><>This would bring the total amount to Ukraine to $129 billion.
When Biden’s OMB got around to responding almost eight months later, the OMB claimed, through an opaque and admittedly incomplete data sheet, that Ukraine aid totaled $111 billion.
<><>“The deficiencies in OMB’s response were numerous,” said of the OMB’s Sept 2023 response.
<><>“did not account for 100’s of millions of dollars in base appropriations for Ukraine’s Security Assistance Initiative.
<><>It omitted the administration’s ‘$6.2 billion in ‘freed-up’ authority’ to send weapons to Ukraine,
<><>which meant that ‘certain numbers in OMB’s spreadsheet, as well as dollar figures the administration provided for at least some previous Ukraine-related drawdowns, are outdated.’
<><>It did not allow us to determine ‘what obligations, apportionments, and outlays the administration has undertaken for other countries in response to the Ukraine conflict.’”
Cong Vance and company concluded Biden OMB’s Sept 2023 response was “nonresponsive.” In a follow-up letter sent September 28, 2023, they added that
<><>“If OMB’s spreadsheet is to be relied on to produce such a figure—and we believe it cannot be—it is around $111 billion.
<><>It would appear likely that the data you have yet to provide would raise this figure by an indeterminate magnitude.
“Every one of these assertions has been validated,” the Tuesday letter claims. On March 8, 2024, “nearly six months after we again requested a full accounting of Ukraine spending, more than a year after our original request, and one business day before the OMB director was scheduled to testify before the Senate Budget Committee,” the letter notes, OMB finally decided to hand over “another tranche of information.” What it included was shocking.
<><>The latest OMB data to Congress revealed, according to the lawmakers’ letter,
<><>Biden failed to report at least another $684 million in appropriated Ukraine spending,
<><>left out another $900 million in DOD assistance connected to the Ukraine war,
<><>and a number of other pitfalls that has undercounted the total amount of Ukraine aid by a magnitude of billions.
There could be more, too, as lawmakers included a list of 14 probing questions and information requests in their latest correspondence with the OMB director.
No surprise—it’s not Joe Biden’s money at stake........ just the American people’s tax dollars.
Expecting the GoFundMe of Zelensky any day now.
If Ukraine can hold on until after the election, if Biden somehow manages to win, the call from establishment will be full NATO involvement in the war including ground troops.
Between now and election day, any amount of money to keep Ukraine going will be approved, until they feel safe to call for ground troops.
blackmail - the minute the US stops these massive payoffs, Zelensky and a dozen or more Ukrainians who know the story begin talking. And some high profile persons (the Bidens et al) go to prison.
Russia has nukes. Are we going to loan Ukraine nuclear weapons? If not, how do they plan to defeat them?
If this is soooooo important to the euros why don’t they stand up with the funds? The rich socialist losers need to sell their investments and properties to support the ukranians? Maybe z’s worthless wife could stop her shopping trips to Paris? What a bunch of criminal grifters.
100% agree. They are using this new bill money to order weapons for delivery YEARS from now instead of just pulling old junk out of storage and sending it now whe it needed. 3700 old model Abrams tanks are in storage. Brandon has sent 31. If Trump had these policies he would have been impeached and most likely removed from office. Guaranteed.
Wasn’t one of the lefts berating chants to Reagan and Bush “No war for profit!!”?
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