The House has finally passed three separate foreign aid bills. Here's how the money breaks down:
- Ukraine: $61 billion
- Israel: $17 billion
- Gaza humanitarian aid: $9 billion
- Taiwan: $8 billion
In addition, the House passed a bill that sanctions Iran and Russia and would force the sale of TikTok. All of the bills go to the Senate next.
The Ukraine vote was 311-112, and that was the closest of the four.¹ All of this was massively popular and bipartisan, but it still took months just to get a vote.
And yet—the bills did eventually pass. It's appalling that it took so long thanks to a small band of malcontents, but they did pass. Somehow, in our usual chaotic, backhanded, slapdash way, the United States once again has managed to do something big. This keeps happening despite everything. We keep saying that the country is ungovernable these days, but in the end, usually after thrashing around for an embarrassingly long time, we govern.
So what's the point? As best as I can tell, the end result is this: (a) we get as much done as we ever have, but (b) a lot more people get pissed off about it. I don't even know if this is a conscious strategy, but it's what the Republican Party has been all about ever since Newt Gingrich took over.
¹Although it's worth noting that Republicans voted against it, 112-101.
Conservatives want to live in some different country, some place about halfway between Afghanistan and Russia, where everything is just like they think it is.
But not Kazakhstan, much too liberal.
They can all join that Dutch Canadian family (the Feenstras?) who sold everything they had and moved to Russia, only to discover it wasn't the white Christian paradise they thought it was. I'll help them pack if they GTFO of here now.
So many wingnuts all have that Lee Harvey Oswald vibe.
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Sadly, no reporting on them since February. Interesting that they didn't take any Russian lessons before going and then seemed surprised that no one (like government officials they had to deal with) spoke English.
There was a follow-up article in mid-March. Seems that the Feenstras don't speak enough Russian, so they have to leave Russia for a period as their temporary visas expire and try again for entry later on another visa. Whoops.
https://boingboing.net/2024/03/18/pack-your-bags-russia-loving-canadian-familys-escape-from-woke-canada-backfires.html
Slava Ukraini!
The per capita income in Israel is higher than in France or the UK.
Yep. Makes zero sense to be sending so much (or really any) money there even if Israel weren't engaged in an illegal annexation/imperialism project. Taiwan's pretty rich too, but they're not doing anything wrong, and they really are hard-pressed.
In virtually none of these cases are we actually sending money. We're sending armament made here (and spending the money to make them here), The dollar figure is a shorthand way to describe this.
It’s also signalling. Sending military aid says that the US is dedicated to the defence of this country so don’t try anything. It also gives you outsized leverage over that countries politics (that the US has used to great affect to mitigate human rights abuses in 1970s South Korea and other places) - though that leverages goes away if you use it so some countries are willing to risk that and push further than the US wants. Personally I suspect the main driver behind the US’s unwavering support for Israel is that they want to deter direct shenanigans by Iran given direct conflict between the two countries wouldn’t help US interests.
Also everyone of the US’s alliance partners (including the UK and France) receives massive indirect US military aid given they would all have to spend much more on their own defence if they didn’t have the US backing.
Once we were on the way to oligarchy (started under Reagan), stuff like Gingrich and Fox News became inevitable. Riling people up to vote for policies that benefit the rich and hurt them requires scorched earth politics. See, eg the histories of feudal Europe, Latin America, Middle East, American South, etc.
And yes, Slava Ukraine and thank whatever deities you believe in that we finally did the right thing.
Churchill nailed it-
"Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing... after they have exhausted all other possibilities."
It's a great quote, but Churchill never said or wrote it.
i stand corrected. Actually I'm sitting but you're still right
Gotta love the sentiment though
Disappointing. But the coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco (about 25 of them, actually).
The longest year I ever spent was returning from Boston to Albany on a bus as a chaperone on a seventh grade field trip. I understand your sentiment exactly.
Timing is everything.
And the use of drones has changed the nature of the battlefield. I hope some of the money allocated will go to making relative cheap and useful drones. Hellfire missiles are a technical tour de force, but suicide drones only costing $100's are having the same effect.
Cost Difference- of Iran’s drone/missile attack, vs Israel’s defense. I’ll bet Iran’s tab was a lot less.
On the day you are born, you look around and ask yourself, "Who are these people, and what was wrong with the way things were?" Then you cry bloody murder because your world has changed without your permission. Eventually, you realize things aren't so bad, which is when your inner Shrek says, "Change is good donkey."
The Republican Party is still in the crying bloody murder phase. Soon enough, it will be revealed to them what being born again actually means.
Being born again has an effect similar to a frontal lobotomy, apparently.
Change is not good or bad. It’s just change.
Progress is good.
Most change is not progress.
So more than half of House Republicans are effectively pro-Putin. That's not something to feel good about.
Their Orange leader is Putin's sock puppet, so its not a surprise. Reagan would be turning over in his grave.
Or pro-Commie.
"In my hand I have a list of 101 pro-commie members of the House GOP."
Sounds familiar.
I just wish they would stop calling the rest of us socialists.
then we could start working together again to solve problems.
Since MAGA (and maybe people describing successful European countries as Democratic Socialist) the "Socialist!" smear has lost its punch, and as part of Donald's "Make America Great Again Like It Was in 1953 When I Was a Child" they have been generally going to "Marxist Communist" with maybe "Fascist" thrown in for extra spice. I've even seen "Maoist."
The old San Franscico school board did seem a bit Maoist
The Russian disinformation campaign paid dividends on Ukraine... how long did the US hold off from providing support to Ukraine and how much did that hurt the Ukrainian effort? And half the GOP actually seems to now believe that the US should not support Ukraine. Useful Idiots...
I still wanna know how much of what the Republicans -- Trump very definitely included but also not exclusively -- are being effectively financially blackmailed by the Russians, eg because they have become dependent on Russian money for their campaigns, or the Russians now have enough evidence that they've taken Russian money to put them at legal risk. I'm willing to bet that Trump, at least, is enough in hock to them that he can't really say no to a pointed request.
My thoughts too. I don’t think the NRA was Russia’s only attempt to establish a secret conduit.
I am a bit skeptical of that theory. Not that it's not in the Russian playbook. But I think that if this had happened it might have come out by now. Because this would be so outrageous and Trump has alienated so many people who are close to him (e.g. Cohen) that I think someone would have said something by now if it had happened... and there are enough plausible alternative explanations for MAGA unnatural Russian lovin'
Wow. Conspiracy theorists are ok when they support Dems, I guess.
Fine, have it your way. Your guy isn’t taking money from Putin, he’s just genuinely admires neo-imperialist mass murderers and wants to please them.
As pointed out, we caught and charged Russians with paying for political action - such as the NRA. That's not a conspiracy theory.
And spreading the meme that Americans should never celebrate another country in our Congress. It's weird.
Question: what does it mean that the four bills will be "sent as a package" to the senate?
They voted separately on each one of the bills. Doesn't that mean that the senate also needs to vote separately on each one (and Biden sign each one)?
I read somewhere that they will be amalgamated into one bill by some process before going to the Senate.
Anyboy with more details?
Can’t find it at the moment, but one report said it was part of the ‘rule’ under which the bills were taken up on the floor.
“You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, only after they've tried everything else.” — Winston Churchill.
Still doesn't bode well for the future of our country that everything needs to escalate to a crisis before anything gets done. Kevin just shrugs with "We keep saying that the country is ungovernable these days, but in the end, usually after thrashing around for an embarrassingly long time, we govern." Eventually though, we might miss our window to swoop in and fix everything before it's too late.
Also, how is a bill that forces 1 company to change ownership not a bill of attainder? I thought the law-degree-holding people said those are prohibited under the Constitution?
Sadly, Churchill never said or wrote that.
some context:
https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2013/10/28/241295755/a-churchill-quote-that-u-s-politicians-will-never-surrender
Doesn't matter. The sentiment is still true. But thanks for correcting me, teacher has a gold star waiting for you.
So all the no votes on the Ukraine bill came from Republicans. Are the breakdowns for the other three around? Israel and Gaza would be interesting.
Have a look at
https://clerk.house.gov/Votes
That looks like a great search… if you already know what you are looking for. Like bill title.
Behind the paywall, but this chart breaks down the votes and is easy to use: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2024/04/20/ukraine-israel-border-funding-house-vote/
my question is what took mike johnson so long to come around, given his anti-putin statement a week or so ago? did he just discover vlad is a threat to the stability of europe? did he just decide that some things are more important than his job as speaker? this could have been passed months ago.
He met with Trump, who told him that blocking aid was hurting the Trump campaign more than it was helping. Johnson can stand up to MTG but he can't stand up to Trump.
Agree that it is Trump changing his position and Johnson follows.
But I think it is probably Johnson that convinced Trump that it hurts his campaign rather than the other way around.
A bunch of baptist ministers showed him evidence Putin was torturing baptists. That and he had a briefing on RU plans that genuinely scared him because the people that have been saying Putin will hit NATO if he wins in Ukraine are right.... and his son just entered the military.
That's a total of $94 billion, or less than $0.1 trillion of a $6.2 trillion federal budget, and even a smaller percentage in terms of GDP. US foreign aid jumped 25% in 2022 to $70 billion, the most the US has spent since the Marshall Plan and early days of the Cold War. Adjusting for inflation, we're in that neighborhood now.
Much of this package is military aid, which means a lot of it is spent in the US, and for what it's worth, not a bad thing to do in an election year.
The way our strange politics works, Mike Johnson is getting more credit for this than Joe Biden right now. But Biden deserves credit for a big shift in US policy during the post-pandemic era, which is looking quite different than the one that preceded it.
So why did Johnson finally see the light? Nancy LeTourneau has a theory that seems to make sense: Putin's war on evangelicals.
Thanks for the link. Putin and his running dogs here have been very effective in painting him as the leading embodiment of worldwide white Christianity. Now I have to wonder whether that icon might be starting to crack.
For the American media, this is an underreported truth. Putin made it his mission to stamp out proselytizing evangelicals.
I know I should try to find joy here, there is some, but I'm disgusted. How many missiles made it through because of this dithering? How many?
Dear painedumonde, you are of course correct, and I have gritted my teeth in despair many times over these past few months...many dead, many civilians, many soldiers, loss of momentum, loss of hope...the only real essential weapon of war, without which all is lost.
But I saw a quote from WaterGirl that I am shamelessly going to steal:
"The best time to plant an oak tree was a hundred years ago. The second best time is today."
I myself am so impressed by this word play, I intend to incorporate it into my own life.
Best Wishes, Traveller
+10
How does that work with DJT stock 😉
I think the wisdom of Joshua would be more applicable there:
Strange stock. The only way to win is not to buy.
Yes, place the acorn on little Tetayana's grave...
No, it isn't "done" until the exact same bill gets past the now-traditional Senate filibuster and passes, and then it makes it to Joe Biden's desk. So add a week, at least, of Ukrainians being killed unnecessarily and Gazans going without food, water, medical aid, "housing", ...
The House grudgingly passing these bills is a start.
Since similar bills have already passed the Senate with plenty of room to spare, I think they'll pass, but not until week after next because they are on a Passover recess.
The bills are scheduled for a vote on Tuesday. Special session.
I do not mean to suggest that the United States should not be assisting Ukraine or Gaza or such, but are we the sole means of their support?
Proportionally to gdp or size of military, no, not by a long shot. We are, though, the biggest economy in the world (or as I like to phrase it, the biggest economy/richest country in the history of the known universe) and the sole source of a number of key weapons systems, and we've had far bigger stockpiles of some of the less advanced munitions than other countries. By this point they probably need new 155mm barrels, for example, and iirc we still have a lot of previous-generation Bradleys they can use.
Several months ago the Pentagon was working on drastically ramping up 155mm shell production and I have to think (but don't know) that this long delay has set back that timetable. We're not their only source for those, by far, but we're the most likely to be able to produce them at the scale they need.
As far as Gaza, I don't know. In terms of logistics, like the artificial harbor, we may be.
In regard to Ukraine, US aid is not the sole means of support, or even the primary means. The EU is. Even with the new funds approved by the US, the EU is a larger supplier for Ukraine.
https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/news/europe-has-a-long-way-to-go-to-replace-us-aid-large-gap-between-commitments-and-allocations/
The gap left when previous US funds were depleted, however, was not filled by new EU funds, and that's why the situation in Ukraine was turning dire.
There's been talk recently that Russia has somewhere between 1-3 years of equipment remaining (primarily focused on tanks and BMPs), at the current use/burn rate. Some of the most optimistic analysis says Russia has until the end of this year until their military is no longer capable of prosecuting a war.
The recent (last 6 months) actions of Ukraine paint a very different asymmetric strategy: Going after Russia's ability to wage war by targeting their military infrastructure and factories. Their AWACs capacity has deteriorated; their strategic bomber fleet reduced; their ammo, drone, and hardware factories hit; their oil and refining infrastructure sufficiently destroyed, such that Russia has sought oil from Kazakhstan.
And so, even while Republicans were dithering and stalling, Ukraine was adapting and growing.
The commentary on reserves is an accounting dream. BMP-1's are plentiful but when M2's go toe to toe with a T-90M and win, their depth of numbers is as only deep as the magazines of a M242 Bushmaster.
Zerg tactics are Ivan's only hope and when Russian mothers flip out, Ukraine will bring Russia to her knees without even entering the country.
"Zerg tactics" (assuming my web searching has led me to the right definition(s)) go back for the Russians at least as far as the Great Patriotic War I would think.
I would like to add somewhat of a different perspective to the United State's delay...as criminal as it might have been....it did have an unanticipated benefit in that it seems to me that in this interregnum Ukraine put to a lie the idea that much of Mother Russia was off limits, that the war could be fought almost exclusively on Ukrainian territory and would be so fought for fear of the Mighty Bear awakening.
Ha! This was the American position and as the most crucial ally of Ukraine Independence and Survival, it was an idea that the Ukrainians felt bound to obey.
But now long range ATACMS's are actually written into law...and the Ukrainians have for months now been setting alight a dozen Russian oil refineries, munition plants, air fields, etc, are all now fair game and may be attacked at will.
There was no huge Russian menace, no red lines that couldn't be crossed, (except of course, purely civilian targets).
Ukraine is free now of unfair American restraints and fears...
I am happy to see that just today the Smolensk Oil Depot is fully ablaze, Kursk oil lines seem to be on fire outside the city, and a major Russian air base in Crimea has successfully been attacked. I am not sure that these operations would have been carried out without this great pause in American support.
Ukraine has a new agency and freedom of action in attacking Russia directly. Slava Ukraini. Traveller
So for every dollar of food we send to Palestine, we send two dollars of bombs to Israel.
Anti-missile missiles cost more than bombs, but your point was made.
Somehow, in our usual chaotic, backhanded, slapdash way, the United States once again has managed to do something big. This keeps happening despite everything. We keep saying that the country is ungovernable these days, but in the end, usually after thrashing around for an embarrassingly long time, we govern.
You know, for all the bullshit that happens on Capitol Hill to the point where it makes one question the sanity of the people who work there, there are those moments, historical moments such as what happened yesterday, that still makes it worthwhile.
Polls show a majority of Americans are very (very!) interested in gun regulations, abortion, immigration, etc. But our elected gov't reps either won't even discuss it, or if they do the filibuster starts and/or the speaker is fired.
But they are all over TicTok, kitchen appliances and abolishing Dept of Ed and ATF
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/
Representative Democracy ? Absolutely! More Kool Aid anyone?
"We keep saying that the country is ungovernable these days, but in the end, usually after thrashing around for an embarrassingly long time, we govern."
Ukraine was 6 months from losing the war. They have lost a lot of people and defensive positions they didn't have to lose and will be costly to regain. The lack of support means that unless they are fools there can be no major Ukrainian offensives until summer 2025. And that's assuming Russia can be held off support continues past this 60 billion (60 billion will get us to 2025 but not the summer) and RU defenses improved for 18 months can be cracked.
The first immediate goal: halt Russian advances. 2nd goal: defeated Russian Summer 2024 offensive. 3rd goal prepare for summer 2025 offensive while holding off RU attacks. Background goal: keep Russia from destroying UA infrastructure.
So I say again: Ukraine was near to LOSING THE WAR because of this delay. They still might lose because of it. So do not, DO NOT act like it's all going to turn out fine despite the delay. This might prove decisive.
$60 billion from our pockets to Ukraine, vs $x Billion from EUs (and ours?) pocket to Russia. Has NATO become an oxymoron? Buying energy from the sworn enemy???
Putin won't invade any EU country. He'll just drag out Ukraine and raise the price of energy. We'll all sell out Ukraine in a heartbeat