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Does the foreign aid package include millions of dollars for pensions in Ukraine?

Man waving U.S. and Ukrainian flags

A man supporting Ukraine funding demonstrates outside the U.S. Capitol before the House passed the foreign aid package on April 20

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Tom Kertscher, Wisconsin Watch
By Tom Kertscher, Wisconsin WatchMay 10, 2024
Tom Kertscher, Wisconsin Watch
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This fact brief was originally published by Wisconsin Watch. Read the original here. Fact briefs are published by newsrooms in the Gigafact network, and republished by The Fulcrum. Visit Gigafact to learn more.

Does the April 2024 U.S. foreign aid package include millions of dollars for pensions in Ukraine?

No.

The $95 billion U.S. aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan prohibits funds from being allocated to pensions in Ukraine.

President Joe Biden signed the package into law April 24, 2024.

Ukraine gets $61 billion for its war with Russia, including $14 billion for buying weapons.

Also included is $8 billion in economic support that “may include budget support,” none of which “may be made available for the reimbursement of pensions.”

Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who represents most of northern Wisconsin, said on Wisconsin talk radio that the law includes “millions” for pensions in Ukraine.

His office, pointing to a U.S. State Department news release, told Wisconsin Watch that Tiffany meant to say that previous U.S. aid packages funded Ukrainian pensions.

A top Ukrainian official warned in December that Ukraine might have to stop making pension payments if foreign assistance wasn’t provided soon.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

US Congress Making emergency supplemental appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2024, and for other purposes.

omny.fm Guest: Congressman Tom Tiffany - The Meg Ellefson Show 042524 - The Meg Ellefson Show

U.S. State Department The United States Funds Economic Survey of Ukraine for Sustainable Recovery

Financial Times Ukraine warns of pension and salary delays without western aid

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Fox News’ Selective Silence: How Trump’s Worst Moments Vanish From Coverage
Why Fox News’ settlement with Dominion Voting Systems is good news for all media outlets
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Fox News’ Selective Silence: How Trump’s Worst Moments Vanish From Coverage

Last week, the ultraconservative news outlet, NewsMax, reached a $73 million settlement with the voting machine company, Dominion, in essence, admitting that they lied in their reporting about the use of their voting machines to “rig” or distort the 2020 presidential election. Not exactly shocking news, since five years later, there is no credible evidence to suggest any malfeasance regarding the 2020 election. To viewers of conservative media, such as Fox News, this might have shaken a fully embraced conspiracy theory. Except it didn’t, because those viewers haven’t seen it.

Many people have a hard time understanding why Trump enjoys so much support, given his outrageous statements and damaging public policy pursuits. Part of the answer is due to Fox News’ apparent censoring of stories that might be deemed negative to Trump. During the past five years, I’ve tracked dozens of examples of news stories that cast Donald Trump in a negative light, including statements by Trump himself, which would make a rational person cringe. Yet, Fox News has methodically censored these stories, only conveying rosy news that draws its top ratings.

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The age of AI warrants asking if the means still further the ends—specifically, individual liberty and collective prosperity.

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If the means justify the ends, we’d still be operating under the Articles of Confederation. The Founders understood that the means—the governmental structure itself—must always serve the ends of liberty and prosperity. When the means no longer served those ends, they experimented with yet another design for their government—they did expect it to be the last.

The age of AI warrants asking if the means still further the ends—specifically, individual liberty and collective prosperity. Both of those goals were top of mind for early Americans. They demanded the Bill of Rights to protect the former, and they identified the latter—namely, the general welfare—as the animating purpose for the government. Both of those goals are being challenged by constitutional doctrines that do not align with AI development or even undermine it. A full review of those doctrines could fill a book (and perhaps one day it will). For now, however, I’m just going to raise two.

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Ninety years ago this month, the Federal Register Act was signed into law in a bid to shine a light on the rules driving President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal—using the best tools of the time to make government more transparent and accountable. But what began as a bold step toward clarity has since collapsed under its own weight: over 100,000 pages, a million rules, and a public lost in a regulatory haystack. Today, the Trump administration’s sweeping push to cut red tape—including using AI to hunt obsolete rules—raises a deeper challenge: how do we prevent bureaucracy from rebuilding itself?

What’s needed is a new approach: rewriting the rule book itself as machine-executable code that can be analyzed, implemented, or streamlined at scale. Businesses could simply download and execute the latest regulations on their systems, with no need for costly legal analysis and compliance work. Individuals could use apps or online tools to quickly figure out how rules affect them.

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