MAGA rages over report Pentagon exempting Ukraine from government shutdown
The Pentagon reportedly decided to shield Ukraine from a potential shutdown amid Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's visit to Washington, D.C.
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Aid for Ukraine is almost entirely flowing through DoD’s budget (DoD sends weapons from storage, then buys new ones - this also helps end-run Dept of State export rules). DoD acquisitions don’t shut down with the rest of the government, they never have. Ergo, military aid to Ukraine will continue unabated through any shutdown.
Anyone in DC who’s surprised by this has no idea how a government shutdown works.
A lot of the billions of dollars in aid is our old equipment from the 90s that was taking up room in storage and costing us money to maintain. Not having to maintain old vehicles is a net savings minus the cost of transporting them.
Well that equipment will be replaced though. Just as Russia is digging out out their T-55s from storage the US military likes to have the capability to do something similar if things get desperate. Just with stuff that's 30 years not 60 years old like Russia is doing.
But they'd need to replace their current equipment with new stuff, they're current equipment will be put into storage.
And yeah they'd want to do this anyway as they don't want to get into a situation like Russia where their stored equipment is 60 years old. So you're kinda right, but if they're replacing equipment a little sooner than planned then there's a calculation for the cost that involves depreciation formulas and the like. Note this was the cause of that accounting error they had recently which was an insane amount of money. They didn't misplace money or misplace equipment, they simply miscalculated the depreciation of the old equipment.
So there is a cost despite it being old equipment. It's not strictly correct to say it's free, though it would be even more incorrect to say it's the same cost as new equipment. The cost is somewhere in between, and it's complicated enough to place a value on it that the DoD screwed it up.
Damn, man. That's a refreshingly simple way to describe it, thank you.
I'd go further and say they don't know how countries work. A government shutdown is really insane to me, but shutting down the military would be just straight up destroying the country.
Maybe a country actually in danger from its neighbors, but America?
America only needs a strong military to play world police.
People think everything stops during a shutdown. Not true essential employees are still required to report to work while non essentials sit at home because Republicans live shutting the government down.
