Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are rejecting the idea of asking Israel and Ukraine to pay the U.S. for the billions of dollars in military assistance they are seeking, saying America must wrack up debt and give away money and arms to support key democracies.
Top Democrats and Republicans said the payoff is worth adding to the $33 trillion national debt, as President Biden presses Congress to approve $106 billion in emergency money for Ukraine, Isreal and other national security fronts.
Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said it’s a choice between paying Ukrainians to fight and die or risking the U.S. having to commit its own troops.
“We’re spending money for our national security. We better have money for that. Otherwise our entire democracy and country is at stake,” he said. “If we don’t do that now, and Vladimir Putin continues as he has — he hasn’t stopped in Georgia, he didn’t stop in Crimea — then not only will we be spending that, our troops, if they mess up and go into any of our NATO allies, countries, our troops will also be there.”
Mr. Biden’s request includes $61 billion for Ukraine in its war with Russia, $14.3 billion for Israel to battle Hamas, $7.4 billion for Taiwan and other Pacific region needs, $14 billion for processing immigrants in the U.S. and $9 billion in humanitarian assistance.
Tension between defense spending and budgets has long roiled Washington, with the war hawks usually prevailing.
But paying for a foreign war adds a different aspect to the debate, with some Republicans saying they cannot stomach the idea when the total federal debt already stands at $33 trillion and is rapidly growing.
“Let these other countries borrow the money they need,” Rep. Thomas Massie, Kentucky Republican, said in a social media post. “Instead of having the U.S.A. borrow money with the perpetual labor of hard-working Americans as collateral for the debt incurred for foreign aid.”
Sen. Mike Braun, an Indiana Republican on the Budget Committee, said constantly tacking the bill onto future generations’ tab isn’t a lasting solution.
“That’s why we’re $33 trillion in debt. So when it comes to anything we do in terms of foreign aid, it ought to always be discussed, how are you paying for it?” he said. “And, of course, we’re paying for it 100% by borrowing it ourselves.”
Examples exist, such as World War II, where the French and British first bought, then later went into debt to acquire U.S. weapons, making America the “arsenal of democracy.”
Those were deals between relatively equal countries who were acing globally significant threats from peer-sized adversaries.
Rep. Ro Khanna, California Democrat, doubted a nation like Ukraine could swing an assistance deal the size of what Mr. Biden is talking about.
“I don’t think they have the credit to work without the United States,” Mr. Khanna told The Washington Times.
Ukraine‘s gross domestic product was about $200 billion in 2021, before the war with Russia began. Israel, though a much smaller nation, has a GDP of roughly $500 billion.
Mr. Khanna said those worried about deepening the U.S. debt should look to other ways to tame it, such as trimming other parts of the Pentagon’s budget or canceling “$10 trillion of tax breaks” signed into law by Presidents Reagan, George W. Bush and Trump.
“That would save one hundred-fold more money than the amount of money we’re talking about on Ukraine,” he said.
Sen. Tim Kaine, Virginia Democrat, said the U.S. needs to spend now to prevent a vacuum that China would rush to fill.
“I talked to allied nations abroad. They say we know that Chinese aid comes with weird strings attached to put us in bizarre situations down the road, but you can’t fight something with nothing,” he said.
Sen. Kevin Cramer, North Dakota Republican, said the U.S. is getting a payoff for the investment.
“To just say ‘no,’ because we borrow it ignores the fact that those relationships, those geopolitical relationships, are what provide us access to land, bases and influence, which matters,” he said. “If we’re not there, people without our values will step in and then pay for that influence.”
Mr. Meeks cast the choice as one of spending American money now or American lives later.
“In the past, we had to send troops and we were on the ground fighting ourselves. In this one we’re saving our lives, we’re giving them what they need,” the New York Democrat said.
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
• Ramsey Touchberry can be reached at rtouchberry@washingtontimes.com.