Category Archives: Ukraine

The Ukraine Aid bill appropriates $61 billion, a very large portion of which will actually be spent in the US to pay US arms makers to replace the stockpiled weapons we will be sending abroad.  That number, however is both too large for me to grasp, and lacks context.  So here goes.

There are about 340 million US persons, making each person’s share of the bill for Ukraine aid about $170.41.  But maybe you don’t want to count babies?  The IRS processes about 169 million income tax returns last year. That makes the individual taxpayer’s share about $360.95. Or, if you prefer, there are 127 million households in the U.S., making each household’s share about $480.31.

Those are numbers I can comprehend.  But compared to what?  The US federal government spent $6.1 trillion last year, so the Ukraine aid amounts to a tidy 1% of than number.  The entire overt US military budget for 2024 is $825 billion, so the Ukraine aid appears substantial–almost 7.4% of the (overt) Pentagon spending (there’s also a large ‘black budget’ that is thought to well exceed $50 billion).

Ukraine aid is also about 50% more than the US spent on agricultural price supports last year.  And, although it’s a little harder to calculate, it’s probably about double what the federal government spent on disaster relief.

Working through these numbers didn’t change my view that the aid bill was important and necessary, but it helped me understand this is a genuinely significant commitment (Trump insurance?).  As the late Senator Everett Dirksen (really) said, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”