A breakdown of Biden’s $40B emergency funding request
Speaking Security Newsletter | Note n°213 | 14 August 2023
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Situation
The White House submitted to Congress a $40.1 billion emergency supplemental funding request late last week. Because only perverts read the entire proposal, I created the table below to provide an at-a-glance summary.
Themes
There’s a lot going on in Biden’s spending request. It’s characterized primarily as just more Ukraine aid, but only about half the total requested amount is for that purpose. There’s funding for sending weapons to Taiwan; economic aid in Africa (with the intent of countering Chinese influence); surveillance, counter-drug, and other operations and technology at the US southern border; domestic disaster relief and more.
Won’t all this additional money breach the spending caps established by the Biden-McCarthy budget bill? It would, but that legislation provides a loophole. The “emergency” designation on these newly-requested funds means they’re exempt from the established spending limits. And there’s no solid, enforceable criteria for what constitutes an emergency — it’s whatever Congress and the president say it is.
^Alt text for screen readers: Biden’s $40.1 billion emergency spending request. About half of the proposed funding is for the war in Ukraine. This table breaks down Biden’s supplemental funding request from August 10, 2023. Ukraine military aid for arms, training, other war costs, $13.3 billion; Ukraine non-military aid for economic and humanitarian programs, $6.2 billion; Multilateral military aid for Africa, Eastern Europe, Taiwan, $1.2 billion; Multilateral non-military aid to counter China and Russia in developing countries, $3.8 billion; Border enforcement and immigration for CBP, DHS, ICE operations, $2.5 billion; counter-drug for fentanyl and other drugs, $788 million; disaster relief for wildfires and other major disasters, $12.1 billion; child labor monitoring and prosecution, $100 million. Data via Office of Management and Budget. Chart and analysis by Stephen Semler (@stephensemler).
-Stephen (@stephensemler; stephen@securityreform.org)
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