On February 13, the US Senate passed a bill including $95.3 billion in taxpayer handouts the Ukrainian, Israeli, and Taiwanese regimes.<\/p>\n
Inter-, intra-, and bi-partisan wrangling\u00a0 in the Senate,\u00a0 House, and Biden administration will likely change the exact size and composition of those handouts right up to the moment of final passage and presidential signature, but let\u2019s accept that $95.3 billion as a starting point for how it\u2019s going to get marketed to you and how much it\u2019s going to lighten your wallet.<\/p>\n
The answer to the latter question is: About $287 per American. Keep that in mind, because we\u2019ll be coming back to it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The marketing points will include items like \u201conly 1.5% of what the federal government spent last year!\u201d and \u201conly 11.6% of last year\u2019s US military spending!\u201d<\/p>\n
And, of course, the old perennial: \u201cWe\u2019re not just giving them the money \u2014 they have to spend it in the US, creating jobs by buying weapons and ammunition from American military contractors! It\u2019s like we\u2019re giving it to ourselves!\u201d<\/p>\n
No, it\u2019s not like we\u2019re giving it to ourselves \u2014 it\u2019s like politicians are giving it to politically connected corporations, minus an \u201cadministrative\u201d rake-off for the various involved regimes, at our expense.<\/p>\n
What could you do with $287 \u2014 or, if your family is average size (3.13 persons), what could you do with about $900?<\/p>\n
How about a brand new set of four high-quality tires for your Toyota RAV4 (I\u2019m assuming you own the most popular SUV in America), and a 75\u2033 ultra-high-definition TV for your living room, with enough left over to take the family out for a very nice dinner and a movie on an even bigger screen?<\/p>\n
How about a month or two in gas, grocery and utility costs for your household?<\/p>\n
Or something in between?<\/p>\n
I\u2019m guessing that $287 per person, $900 per family, represents a reasonably big chunk of money, not chump change, to you.<\/p>\n
Having it means a better life than not having it.<\/p>\n
And it would go further if those \u201cdefense\u201d contractors were competing to make things YOU want instead of to make things the Ukrainian, Israeli, and Taiwanese regimes want.<\/p>\n
If you want those regimes to have your money, you should be allowed to give it to them. That should be your choice, not Joe Biden\u2019s or Mitch McConnell\u2019s or Mike Johnson\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t let them dazzle you with political marketing. They\u2019re just taking your money and giving it to their friends, and that\u2019s all they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n
Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On February 13, the US Senate passed a bill including $95.3 billion in taxpayer handouts the Ukrainian, Israeli, and Taiwanese regimes. Inter-, intra-, and bi-partisan wrangling\u00a0 in the Senate,\u00a0 House, and Biden administration will likely change the exact size and composition of those handouts right up to the moment of final passage and presidential signature, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-45982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45982"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45985,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45982\/revisions\/45985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45982"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=45982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}