Congress must scrutinize the US spending spree on global crises

The Biden administration is attempting one of its most ambitious foreign policy moves yet: convincing the American people and a divided Congress to authorize a $105 billion supplemental spending bill to deal with a diverse set of global crises.

The president’s address to the nation on Thursday night framed this spending as a response to the vicious Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel, linked it to the ongoing war in Ukraine, and reasserted America’s global role as the “indispensable nation.” Israel featured heavily. Biden, seated in the Oval Office, promised that this spending would cement America’s “unprecedented commitment to Israel’s security” and make sure that Israel has “what they need to protect their people, today and always.”

But for all of Biden’s high-flying rhetoric, it’s hard to disguise the reality of this proposed supplemental. The administration – faced with congressional pushback on foreign policy priorities – is proposing a truly epic logroll in which more popular spending priorities like Israel are lumped together with increasingly less popular ones like Ukraine, stitching together enough things that the bill might pass even our monumentally dysfunctional congress.

The Biden administration may be right that this tactic will work. Much is dependent on whether Republicans in the House prove capable of electing a new speaker in the coming days – and on how willing that speaker is to bring this legislation to the floor.

Regardless of the ongoing speaker drama, however, the breakdown of the supplemental – and the president’s rather unconvincing attempt to rhetorically link the Israeli and Ukrainian conflicts in the minds of American voters – tells us a lot about Biden’s priorities and suggests that the administration’s foreign policy continues to drift away from strategic planning, and into a reactive, all-encompassing approach to the world.

Take a moment to consider the stunning amounts we’re talking about here. The proposed supplemental will include over $60 billion for Ukraine, around $14.5 billion for Israel, $13 for the border, and a couple of billion dollars for Indo-Pacific initiatives, including AUKUS. An additional $10 billion is being requested for flexible humanitarian response across these areas. The grand total – $105 billion dollars – is equivalent to a whopping 12% of the last DOD budget.

The move to bundle together all these priorities is reflective of a growing shift inside the Biden administration towards the idea that America can do everything, an idea that contrasts strongly with the early days of Biden’s presidency, where the administration made efforts to withdraw from Afghanistan, and to stabilize the relationship with Russia and the question of European security in order to focus on the Indo-Pacific.

Instead, the administration today pays most of its attention to Europe and, now, to the Middle East. There is no denying that Biden’s initial response to the Russian war in Ukraine was effective, helping to bolster support to Ukraine in a way that undermined Russian capabilities without risking broader conflict. But as the war in Ukraine has ground into a battle of attrition over increasingly tiny pieces of land, it has become clearer that the administration doesn’t have a good exit plan from this conflict, nor any strategy other than simply staying the course.

The breakdown of the supplemental funding request suggests that this is likely to continue. Indeed, the amount of Ukraine aid in the supplemental request is not only substantially larger than the aid request for all other contingencies in the package, but also almost as much as the United States has already sent to Ukraine since the start of the war. And as a recent publication from the Council on Foreign Relations highlights , aid to Ukraine now dwarfs that sent to any other recipient of U.S. aid, and towers over historic cases where the United States sent funds to support Israel, Taiwan, or others in wartime.

It is no surprise then that Congressional Republicans and China hawks are increasingly concerned that support for Ukraine is eating into the American ability to focus on a rising China . The president – attempting to preempt these criticisms – argued in his Oval Office speech that this spending will be broadly useful in bolstering the U.S. industrial base, regardless of where the armaments produced end up. But as recent reports have made clear, there are increasingly clear tradeoffs in U.S. support for different conflicts. The Pentagon has struggled to source ammunition to send to Israel, thanks to stockpiles depleted for Ukraine, and can expect to face more difficult choices in the future, when it faces overlap between weapons required for Ukraine, Israel, or a Taiwan or other contingency.

Perhaps the biggest problem here is the increasingly grandiose and global nature of the Biden administration’s approach to national security. Bundling together Israel, Ukraine, the border and even Taiwan in the budget supplemental may reinforce the arguments Biden made in his speech: that “there is nothing, nothing beyond our capacity,” and that America is the “essential nation.”

But the actual breakdown of the supplemental request shows the reality: the United States does face trade-offs in foreign policy. In prioritizing conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, Biden is in practice deprioritizing the Indo-Pacific, perhaps the region with the most genuinely pressing security threats for the United States itself. Congress would be wise to consider whether the breakdown of this supplemental spending bill is really the most efficient and strategic use of America’s limited resources.

Ashford is a senior fellow at the Stimson Center’s Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program.

拜登政府正试图推行其迄今为止最雄心勃勃的外交政策举措之一：说服美国人民和分裂的国会授权一项 1050 亿美元的补充支出法案，以应对各种各样的全球危机。

总统周四晚间向全国发表讲话，将这笔支出定性为对10月7日哈马斯对以色列发动的恶性恐怖袭击的回应，并将其与持续不断的乌克兰战争联系起来，重申了美国作为“不可或缺的国家”的全球角色。以色列是讲话的重点。拜登在椭圆形办公室承诺，这笔支出将巩固美国“对以色列安全的空前承诺”，并确保以色列“拥有保护其人民所需的一切，无论现在还是将来”。

尽管拜登的言辞慷慨激昂，但这项补充拨款提案的本质却难以掩盖。面对国会在外交政策优先事项上的阻力，本届政府提出了一项堪称史诗级的利益交换方案，将以色列等更受欢迎的支出项目与乌克兰等越来越不受欢迎的项目捆绑在一起，拼凑出足够多的内容，以期该法案即使在我们这个极其混乱的国会也能获得通过。

拜登政府或许是对的，这一策略可能会奏效。关键在于众议院共和党人能否在未来几天内选出一位新议长，以及这位新议长是否愿意将这项法案提交众议院审议。

然而，撇开目前议长之争不谈，补充辩论的失败——以及总统试图将以色列和乌克兰冲突在美国选民心中联系起来的拙劣尝试——告诉我们很多关于拜登优先事项的信息，并表明本届政府的外交政策正继续偏离战略规划，转向一种被动的、包罗万象的世界观。

请花点时间想想我们这里讨论的金额有多么惊人。拟议的补充拨款将包括超过600亿美元用于乌克兰，约145亿美元用于以色列，130亿美元用于边境地区，以及数十亿美元用于印太地区倡议，包括奥库斯行动。此外，还要求额外拨款100亿美元用于在这些地区开展灵活的人道主义援助。总额高达1050亿美元，相当于上一届国防部预算的12%。

将所有这些优先事项捆绑在一起的做法，反映出拜登政府内部正在发生一种日益增长的转变，即美国可以包揽一切。这种想法与拜登总统任期初期形成了鲜明对比，当时拜登政府努力从阿富汗撤军，稳定与俄罗斯的关系，并解决欧洲安全问题，以便专注于印太地区。

如今，本届政府将大部分精力放在欧洲，以及现在的中东。不可否认，拜登最初对俄罗斯入侵乌克兰战争的应对是有效的，它帮助加强了对乌克兰的支持，削弱了俄罗斯的能力，同时又避免了更大规模的冲突。但随着乌克兰战争演变成一场争夺日益狭小领土的消耗战，越来越明显的是，本届政府既没有摆脱这场冲突的良好计划，也没有除维持现状之外的任何战略。

补充拨款申请的细分情况表明，这种情况很可能会持续下去。事实上，补充申请中对乌克兰的援助金额不仅远超该方案中所有其他应急援助的申请金额，而且几乎与美国自战争爆发以来已向乌克兰提供的援助总额相当。正如外交关系委员会最近发布的一份报告所强调的那样，目前美国对乌克兰的援助规模远远超过对任何其他受援国的援助，也远超美国历史上在战时向以色列、台湾或其他地区提供援助的规模。

因此，国会共和党人和对华鹰派日益担忧美国对乌克兰的支持正在削弱其应对崛起中国的能力，也就不足为奇了。总统试图先发制人地回应这些批评，在椭圆形办公室的讲话中辩称，无论生产的武器最终流向何处，这笔开支都将广泛地有助于增强美国的工业基础。但正如最近的报道所表明的那样，美国对不同冲突的支持之间存在着越来越明显的权衡取舍。由于用于乌克兰的弹药储备耗尽，五角大楼难以找到运往以色列的弹药，而且预计未来在应对乌克兰、以色列、台湾或其他突发事件所需的武器重叠问题时，它将面临更加艰难的选择。

或许最大的问题在于拜登政府在国家安全问题上日益宏大且全球化的立场。将以色列、乌克兰、边境乃至台湾问题捆绑在预算补充文件中，可能会强化拜登在演讲中提出的论点，即“没有什么事是我们做不到的”，以及美国是“至关重要的国家”。

但补充拨款请求的实际构成揭示了现实：美国在外交政策上确实面临权衡取舍。拜登将欧洲和中东的冲突列为优先事项，实际上却忽视了印太地区——这或许是美国自身面临的最紧迫安全威胁的地区。国会应该认真考虑，这份补充拨款法案的构成是否真正体现了美国有限资源的最有效、最具战略意义的利用方式。

阿什福德是史汀生中心“重塑美国大战略”项目的高级研究员。