Congress Could Nearly Double U.S. Border Budget With $40 Billion They’re Sending Ukraine

The $40 billion package that the U.S. House of Representatives just voted Tuesday to send to Ukraine could have nearly doubled the budget for our own Customs and Border Protection, Coast Guard, Transportation Security Administration, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement combined.

With just 57 votes in opposition, 368 representatives across the political spectrum voted to send almost $40 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars to Ukraine, within hours of the bill’s text being released. It’s more than the $33 billion previously requested by President Joe Biden, and an increase in federal spending amid a time of record inflation, federal deficits, and congressional failure to pass regular U.S. budgets.

The bill was quickly sent to the Senate, where South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who previously called for the assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin, signaled this might be the first of many such spending sprees for foreign interests, saying “Do I think this will be the last round? No, I think we’ll be doing this again.”

It’s certainly understandable that many members of Congress want to help freedom-loving people in Ukraine. In a vacuum, with unlimited taxpayer money, it might be a good thing to do.

But in rushing to spend other people’s money so Congress can feel like heroes, they’re ignoring the crises upon crises plaguing their own constituents, while failing to even ensure that the billions of dollars in aid are spent judiciously. Meanwhile, rampant inflation at 40-year highs is squeezing Americans’ wallets, while our government is failing to keep our own borders secure from illegal border-crossers and a drug invasion killing Americans in record numbers.

As Rep. Greg Steube, a Republican from Florida, summarized, “less than 6 hours before a vote, the Democrats dropped a massive, last-minute bill to send $40 billion more without any safeguards, assurances of use, or proof of a strategic plan for the U.S. role in Ukraine.”

“I voted in April to approve a loan of U.S. military equipment to Ukraine and voted in March for $14 billion in military and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine,” he noted. “Since then, Congress has not received a single report on how much of this funding was spent, if any, nor assurances that the funding even reached Ukraine.”

Even CNN admitted, “What happens to weapons sent to Ukraine? The US doesn’t really know,” before hand-waving the question with the absurd explanation that “It’s a conscious risk the Biden administration is willing to take.”

Steube also pointed out that the $40 billion from American taxpayers poised to go to Ukraine could almost double what we spend on the four main services responsible for homeland defense.

While the Department of Homeland Security budget for fiscal year 2022 was roughly $90.8 billion, more than 30 percent of that went to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). After subtracting smaller agencies like the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the budget devotes $46.6 billion to the Coast Guard, TSA, ICE, and CBP combined — just barely a higher number than the money Congress is rushing to send overseas with one of likely multiple foreign war spending packages.

Of that figure, the Coast Guard receives about $13 billion, TSA gets about $9 billion, ICE gets about $8 billion, and CBP gets about $16 billion. It’s not hard to imagine the impact that doubling those numbers would have on securing our porous southern border and choking the influx of deadly drugs that pour into our country.

Instead, the party in power (joined by many Republicans) refuses to meaningfully address their growing crises, staging a virtue-signaling display of rushing U.S. money off to Ukraine without taking care to ensure it falls into the proper hands for proper use. And if that wasn’t enough, their accompanying rhetoric may drag Americans into a war we don’t want with a nuclear power while Communist China’s rise continues unchecked.

Elle Reynolds is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.

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