We should be debating whether we are committed to Ukraine for the long haul and, if so, budget for it.
Like many conservatives, including most here at National Review, I am sympathetic to the moral and strategic case for supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia. I hold no animus toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and I am sober-minded about Vladimir Putin and his brutality. But I also think that we have not had an honest debate about the growing costs of U.S. support for Ukraine.
It was one thing, early in the conflict, when we were debating a one-off, emergency supplemental spending bill supporting Ukraine at the outbreak of war. But since then, there have been multiple Ukraine-aid bills. Back in May, I asked what the limiting principle was in our financial commitment to Ukraine. So far, the answer has been: There is none. The current batch of aid expected to be passed as part of the omnibus adds $45 billion to the prior amounts, bringing the total to over $100 billion.
This is real money. To put it in context, one of the foreign-aid programs that generates controversy — at least among activists and the commentariat — is U.S. support for Israel. Yet the ten-year cost of aid to Israel is $38 billion — which will be dwarfed by our commitment to Ukraine in 2022 alone.
I take my colleague John McCormack’s point that, in percentage terms, aid to Ukraine represents a small fraction of the $1.7 trillion omnibus and overall federal budget. But that says more about the size of the federal budget than it does about the cost of aid to Ukraine. Many items in the federal budget that are under $100 billion have been the subject of a lot more debate than we’ve had over Ukraine aid. To give one example, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that spending on subsidizing the purchase of health insurance on Obamacare’s exchanges was $89 billion in 2022 (and that’s with Democrats’ enhancement of subsidy levels).
Furthermore, there is no end in sight for the war in Ukraine. If we’re looking at $100 billion a year for as long as the war goes on, that could mean several hundred billion more dollars. Estimates for the costs of rebuilding Ukraine have ranged from $350 billion to $750 billion — and those estimates are only going to go higher. It is not hard to imagine, when all is said and done, that the strategy of giving Ukraine whatever it wants for as long as it wants could bring the eventual price tag to $1 trillion or more. And yet, there has not been a real debate about whether we should be comfortable with that level of commitment, or, if so, how we should pay for it.
The debate over the war in Ukraine has been particularly distorted, because it is so intertwined with our own domestic politics given the layover from the Trump–Russia story and the Ukraine-related impeachment. Anybody who questions the size or length of our commitment risks being branded a Putin apologist, but an honest debate needs to take place.
This isn’t to say that we need to pull the plug on Ukraine immediately and cease all support. But the debate should no longer be framed in the context of emergency spending. We should be debating whether we are committed to Ukraine for the long haul and, if so, budget for it.
The war in Ukraine is happening not at a time of surplus for the United States, but at a time when debt is at its highest level since World War II and set to exceed this level within the decade. That means that any expenditures on Ukraine will simply add to the debt unless offset elsewhere in the budget.
If Mitch McConnell believes, as he has said, that the most important priority for Republicans in the defense budget is to deliver aid to Ukraine, he should say which aspects of the defense budget he views as being of lower priority, or identify cuts elsewhere in the budget to pay for it. If Democrats believe that funding Ukraine aid is critical, they should decide whether doing so is more important than protecting entitlements or advancing other spending priorities.
There are strong arguments that degrading Russia’s military potential without putting American lives directly in harm’s way, thwarting Putin’s territorial ambitions, and sending a message to China are all within America’s national-security interests and thus warrant continued support for Ukraine. But if that is the case, we should be willing to make budgetary trade-offs. If it’s hard to find $100 billion a year to cut, then that just speaks to how large of a commitment this is becoming.
While aid to Ukraine may not be the primary driver of our nation’s debt problem, a failure to budget for our long-term commitments is very much indicative of the overall attitude toward spending in Washington that has created our current fiscal mess.