2023 Aid to Ukraine Through Aug 3. This year the US promises about six times more than last year.
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.”
Today’s long-delayed House vote on aid to Ukraine reminds me of a line that I was sorry to discover 
JOTWELL, the online journal of reviews of recent faculty scholarship relating to the law, needs a MiamiLaw 1L or 2L to join our editorial team for the summer. Update: alas at present the job is only available to UM law students because of bureaucratic limits on how pay works….
