Washington has already allocated $68 billion to Kiev, which, adding the $45 billion funding approved by the Congress, would bring the total spending, since the start of the conflict, to about $113 billion, said an article published by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

By the bill’s own accounting, the money going to Ukraine dwarfs the funding for most domestic priorities.

Perhaps most revealing, the analysis shows, that if Ukraine were a U.S. state, it would rank 11th in terms of the amount of federal funds received, according to government spending data. In other words, in the past 12 months Kiev has received more U.S. taxpayer dollars than the amount seen in 40 states.

Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Appropriations Committee and responsible for publishing the legislative proposal, clarified that it was about $4 billion more than what “communities across the nation recovering from droughts, hurricanes, floods, forest fires and natural disasters” would receive.

The article also noted that the amount is the largest awarded by the United States to any country in a year except, at least, the Vietnam War. In fact, the assistance given by President Joe Biden’s administration is more than what every nation in the world spends on their army,apart from the United States and China.

The $113 billion is also about the same as what the law allocates for benchmark spending at the Department of State and Department of Homeland Security combined, and slightly less than the $118.7 billion expected for health care for US military veterans.

At this point, the article from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft noted that it is time for citizens to have a genuine conversation about how much taxpayers should pay to support Ukraine, and they should, at the very least, discuss how big the check they are willing to write is, particularly with households reeling from skyrocketing inflation and a stagnant economy, which could enter a recession in 2023.

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