So billions of taxpayer dollars from hard working Americans are being sent overseas as aid, when at the same time, our government at home is in a downward spiral of crippling debt? Sure, we’ll pretend that makes sense.

The US government has sent roughly $46.6 billion to Ukraine to aid in the war effort (over the course of their nearly two-year war), $4.89 billion to Afghanistan, $3.3 billion to Israel, and more.

The United States stands firm as the most “generous” country in the world in terms of handing out financial aid—dishing out roughly $61 billion each year for various causes such as humanitarian aid, commercial interests, and security. This trend has been continuous since the end of World War II when we sent $13.3 billion in aid to rebuild Europe.

In the mid-1900s, America was once dubbed the “international police force;” well news flash, we can no longer sustain giving handouts and playing hero for other countries that say please and thank you. We are currently facing crippling national debt (currently sitting at roughly $33 trillion), a pending recession, rising rates of homelessness in major cities, as well as rising unemployment rates. We should not be focusing our efforts on sending more money overseas.

Not to mention, in the current state of the world, with the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war, sending money to Ukraine just puts a target on our backs if it were to come that the Russians defeated Ukraine. Russia is not a bear we want to go poking. Just sayin’.

I understand and support that sending humanitarian aid as disaster relief or poverty relief is the right thing to do and desperately needed to prevent major issues and help save lives. But I don’t think that sending Ukraine over $40 billion is really that necessary. Admittedly, it’s sort of a lose-lose situation on our part: if we let the Russians stomp Ukraine into the ground we essentially give them clearance to invade other parts of Europe, but sending Ukraine aid implies favoritism which puts us even higher on Putin's hit list. Maybe at the beginning of the invasion a little bit of funding was fine, but this is just excessive.

Foreign aid is a tricky issue, and are we sure that our current president is qualified and competent enough to play with the fire? Is anyone? Probably not, but some give it a better fighting chance than others. We need to focus on the home front and put America first again before we start giving handouts. It’s not the 1950s; we can no longer be the international police. Let’s get our country under control before we take care of others.