By Cullen McCue – Trending Political News
A new analysis from the Heritage Foundation found that the current U.S. commitment of $113 billion in aid to Ukraine is costing American taxpayers roughly $900 per household.
“The formal aid packages alone amount to a staggering $113 billion—roughly $900 per American household and almost 12 times the spending cuts promised by House leadership in the annual spending bills,” Richard Stern, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, told the Daily Signal.
“As with all new federal spending,” Stern added, “this $113 billion spending spree was added to our national debt and will cost more than $300 in interest costs per household over the decade. Of course, we’ve given more aid than that, but haven’t paid the bill on it yet.”
To date, Congress has allocated more than $113 billion in ““aid and military assistance to support the Ukrainian government and allied nations” since the conflict in wider Ukraine began last February.
“As the war in Ukraine becomes a prolonged conflict, Americans are rightly growing skeptical of sending more taxpayer dollars and equipment from our depleted armory,” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts told The Daily Signal. “Washington has failed to address their concerns, explain our nation’s strategy in the war, or enact basic oversight for our aid,” he added.
“If Congress can’t fix those fundamental issues, they have no business sending more money into the fog of war.”
The Heritage Foundation used figures provided by the Congressional Budget Office, which peg the number of U.S. households at 127.9 million for the fiscal year 2022, which ended last September. This brings the total cost of aid to the Ukrainian government to about $884 per US. household.
That figure is likely set to increase as President Biden intends to ask Congress to allocate more aid to Ukraine, as well as disaster relief, in a new bill. “Estimates of what the administration will request vary wildly from $10 billion to $70 billion, which demonstrates that no one knows what to request because they don’t know what they will do with it,” Heritage Foundation national security expert Victoria Coates told The Daily Signal.