"presenting the viewer with only two absolute choices when in fact, there could be many."
Limited only by one's imagination. In my case, I have trouble imagining any domestic spending you approve of.
#1411299
The Council on Foreign Relations estimates we sent $76.8 billion in military, financial, and humanitarian aid to Ukraine between January 24, 2022, and February 24, 2023; $46.6 billion of that was military aid, so the aforementioned TikTok video got that part right, at least. Yes, that’s a huge sum of money that could go a long way toward addressing some of our nation’s most pressing social problems. Many Democrats in Washington undoubtedly would love to allocate such sums to helping Americans find housing, jobs, sobriety, and so on. Alas, most Republicans would oppose such an idea.
“Let’s say we’ve given $30 billion in arms to Ukraine—it’s simply not the case that if that $30 billion hadn’t been spent on Ukraine that it would have been spent on homelessness here,” said Charles Kupchan, a professor of international affairs and an expert on isolationism at Georgetown University. He pointed out, accurately, that many right-wing opponents of aid to Ukraine have consistently opposed domestic spending initiatives, including under the Biden administration.
Spending billions on Ukraine aid does not preclude us from spending billions more on domestic aid, and cutting the Ukraine budget to $0 would do nothing to solve our social problems. Moreover, scapegoating Ukraine for America’s embarrassingly threadbare social safety net and paltry investment in public goods and services raises the question of how many other industrialized nations have been able to provide aid to Ukraine while still maintaining universal health care systems, low levels of poverty, and generally providing a good quality of life for their citizens. The $76.8 billion in aid to Ukraine, per the CFR’s estimate, accounts for only about one-third of a percent of our gross domestic product. The U.K.’s $10.6 billion amounts to a similar percentage of their GDP, while Poland’s $3.8 billion accounts for more than half a percent of theirs |
