Well. There’s your problem.
No it didn’t. It technically sent $billions less to Ukraine due to the incorrect valuation being used for the mostly obsolete military equipment we’re lend leasing Ukraine.[1] It just means there’s $6.2B more worth of obsolete equipment that can be sent under existing authorization. Technically we’re ridding ourselves of the massive cost of decommissioning the equipment, getting valuable real-world intel on system performance and enemy capabilities, while knee capping one of our major geopolitical adversaries and our only significant marginal cost is shipping! This is the financial deal of the century!
1. https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-russia-war-weapons-surplu...
We don't have $6.2B worth as it's military accounting value, not actual value. There are no buyers for this obsolete equipment apart from Ukraine, and no longer any use for the US military. The money put into the equipment is a sunken cost and the US Gov has to incur the ongoing cost of storage or decommissioning. This entire controversy is based on a seemingly willful misunderstanding of why the military gives obsolete equipment a monetary label and then an equivocation of that monetary value label with actual money.
All the numbers thrown around about the lend lease program are military accounting and do not impose almost any actual costs to the US tax payer, basically just the cost of shipping which is minuscule compared to the Military budget let alone Entitlements. Therefore, the comparison of essentially military funny-money and actual Entitlement increases is just hyper-partisan nonsense.
Pretending to care about “the beast” means you make sure firefighters make less than McDonald’s managers, while “supporting the troops” by making sure your local defense contractors continue to get paid for making overpriced bolts or whatever.
Paying the guys keeping the burning parts of your country in check enough, so that they keep doing it seems like it would be up there with "maintaining roads".
More likely, there is a bit of focused lobbying being done to suborn the few decisionmakers involved with this, so that a company that contracts firefighting services to the government can grow their contract.
I don't know exactly how it works in California. I know there is a "California Conservation Camp" program that pays inmates $2.90 to $5.12 per day while in the camps, and $1.4 per hour fighting fires, but I don't know if they work with only state prisons or if private prisons get in on that too.
Maybe the cost savings there are enough to drive this dynamic.
The recent railroad strike fiasco was a perfect example of how things are really ran.
Doesn't seem son hard...
https://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2015/02/17000-federal-e...