American officials and members of Congress who support the Current Conflict Thing continue to drive home the idea that this way of doing “foreign aid” is as American as apple pie. Surely, in the aftermath of the multi-trillion dollar boondoggles in Iraq and Afghanistan, they hope the marketing sticks.

On Tuesday, President Biden declared that “it spends the money right here in the United States of America,” adding that “history is watching.”

Now, it’s worth breaking down why this noxious status quo is so damaging to the fiscal and societal health of the United States. For that, we must go to the first principles of economics.

First and foremost, the government does not create jobs. Let me repeat: the government does not and cannot create jobs. This is especially true for the no-bid Beltway defense behemoths, which have become increasingly centralized with increasingly bloated budgets and profit margins over time.

For example, let’s consider this $95 billion Ukraine bill that just passed the Senate and is being debated before the House. If that bill passes and it is signed into law, they will proceed to print $95 billion dollars and distribute the money to an increasingly centralized list of Beltway-based mega corporations that includes Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and the gang.

Despite allocating $820 billion annually to the Defense Department, the government could once more not find the necessary funds to support Ukraine. Surprise! So they need $95 billion more dollars ($60 billion allocated “for Ukraine”, on top of the hundreds of billions already dumped into the Slava Slush Fund. Given that the U.S. is running a $1.7 trillion annual deficit, that means all $95 billion will be added to the $34.23 trillion in debt that is currently on the books.

Moreover, by printing $95 billion dollars, the government therefore will debase the value of all of our dollars, and this will result in further inflation. In short, everyone BUT the Beltway defense industrial crowd gets screwed. No real value is created, and fiscal harm is imposed upon the rest of the country.

Through these top down, anti-market measures, Congress siphons off precious resources from the American economy, and uses them to make bombs and weapons for Anatoliy’s journey into the meat grinder.

A reasonable amount of defense spending is indeed necessary to defend the country (surely, a lot less than $820 billion a year), but none of these expenditures have anything to do with protecting America’s security. These kind of “foreign aid” bills are nothing more than stimulus checks for the Beltway ruling class.