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Sunday, March 20, 2022

UKRAINE SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2022

UKRAINE SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2022

I'm reading about the end of the world and the author mentions that the US Congress has appropriated $13.6 billion to assist Ukraine against the Russian invasion. $13.6 billion is a chunk of money, it's one percent of a trillion dollars, and you know that old saw, a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you're talking about real money. So I checked and I found this which kind of sounds like it might be true.

I'm reading through it and like all government bureaucratese, it contains a bunch of facts, but they are all piled together higgledy-piggledy. It's a little tough to make sense of when billion dollar allocations are given the same billing as million dollar allocations, so I put the numbers in a spreadsheet and graphed the result. May you enjoy the picture I have painted.

You might notice that the total of the amounts listed is $16.6 billion, not the $13.6 billion in the title. That's because I included this item:

Increased Authorities – The legislation includes $3 billion in authority to drawdown defense articles and services and increased flexibility to transfer excess defense equipment for Ukraine and other regional allies.

I don't know exactly what that means, but it sure sounds like another $3 billion for Ukraine. 

P.S. I'm always looking for ways to automatically format data the way I want it. Today I figured out that it you change  millions to *10^6,  billions to *10^9 and $ to =, you can change dollar amounts like $13.6 billion to pure numbers.

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