US spends a record $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since last Oct. 7

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States has spent a record of at least $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since the war in Gaza began and led to escalating conflict around the Middle East, according to a report for Brown University's Costs of War project, released Monday on the anniversary of Hamas’ attacks on Israel.

An additional $4.86 billion has gone into stepped-up U.S. military operations in the region since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, researchers said in findings first provided to The Associated Press. That includes the costs of a Navy-led campaign to quell strikes on commercial shipping by Yemen's Houthis, who are carrying them out in solidarity with the fellow Iranian-backed group Hamas.

The report — completed before Israel opened a second front, this one against Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, in late September — is one of the first tallies of estimated U.S. costs as the Biden administration backs Israel in its conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon and seeks to contain hostilities by Iran-allied armed groups in the region.

The financial toll is on top of the cost in human lives: Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 people in Israel a year ago and took others hostage. Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed nearly 42,000 people in Gaza, according to the territory's Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count.

At least 1,400 people in Lebanon, including Hezbollah fighters and civilians, have been killed since Israel greatly expanded its strikes in that country in late September.

The financial costs were calculated by Linda J. Bilmes, a professor at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, who has assessed the full costs of U.S. wars since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and fellow researchers William D. Hartung and Stephen Semler.

Here's a look at where some of the U.S. taxpayer money went:

Israel — a protege of the United States since its 1948 founding — is the biggest recipient of U.S. military aid in history, getting $251.2 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1959, the report says.

Even so, the $17.9 billion spent since Oct. 7, 2023, in inflation-adjusted dollars, is by far the most military aid sent to Israel in one year. The U.S. committed to providing billions in military assistance to Israel and Egypt each year when they signed their 1979 U.S.-brokered peace treaty, and an agreement since the Obama administration set the annual amount for Israel at $3.8 billion through 2028.

The U.S. aid since the Gaza war started includes military financing, arms sales, at least $4.4 billion in drawdowns from U.S. stockpiles and hand-me-downs of used equipment.

Much of the U.S. weapons delivered in the year were munitions, from artillery shells to 2,000-pound bunker-busters and precision-guided bombs.

Expenditures range from $4 billion to replenish Israel's Iron Dome and David’s Sling missile defense systems to cash for rifles and jet fuel, the study says.

Unlike the United States' publicly documented military aid to Ukraine, it was impossible to get the full details of what the U.S. has shipped Israel since last Oct. 7, so the $17.9 billion for the year is a partial figure, the researchers said.

They cited Biden administration “efforts to hide the full amounts of aid and types of systems through bureaucratic maneuvering.”

Funding for the key U.S. ally during a war that has exacted a heavy toll on civilians has divided Americans during the presidential campaign. But support for Israel has long carried weight in U.S. politics, and Biden said Friday that “no administration has helped Israel more than I have."

The Biden administration has bolstered its military strength in the region since the war in Gaza started, aiming to deter and respond to any attacks on Israeli and American forces.

Those additional operations cost at least $4.86 billion, the report said, not including beefed-up U.S. military aid to Egypt and other partners in the region.

The U.S. had 34,000 forces in the Middle East the day that Hamas broke through Israeli barricades around Gaza to attack. That number rose to about 50,000 in August when two aircraft carriers were in the region, aiming to discourage retaliation after a strike attributed to Israel killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran. The total is now around 43,000.

The number of U.S. vessels and aircraft deployed — aircraft carrier strike groups, an amphibious ready group, fighter squadrons, and air defense batteries — in the Mediterranean, Red Sea and Gulf of Aden has varied during the year.

The Pentagon has said another aircraft carrier strike group is headed to Europe very soon and that could increase the troop total again if two carriers are again in the region at the same time.

The U.S. military has deployed since the start of the war to try to counter escalated strikes by the Houthis, an armed faction that controls Yemen's capital and northern areas, and has been firing on merchant ships in the Red Sea in solidarity with Gaza. The researchers called the $4.86 billion cost to the U.S. an “unexpectedly complicated and asymmetrically expensive challenge.”

Houthis have kept launching attacks on ships traversing the critical trade route, drawing U.S. strikes on launch sites and other targets. The campaign has become the most intense running sea battle the Navy has faced since World War II.

“The U.S. has deployed multiple aircraft carriers, destroyers, cruisers and expensive multimillion-dollar missiles against cheap Iranian-made Houthi drones that cost $2,000,” the authors said.

Just Friday, the U.S. military struck more than a dozen Houthi targets in Yemen, going after weapons systems, bases and other equipment, officials said.

The researchers' calculations included at least $55 million in additional combat pay from the intensified operations in the region.

Destruction left by the Israeli air and ground offensive is seen in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Friday, Sept. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate passed legislation early Saturday to boost Social Security payments for millions of people, pushing a longtime priority for former public employees through Congress in one of its last acts for the year.

The bipartisan bill, which next heads to President Joe Biden, will eliminate longtime reductions to Social Security benefits for nearly 3 million people who receive pensions from work in federal, state and local government, or public service jobs like teachers, firefighters and police officers. Advocates say the Social Security Fairness Act rights a decades-old disparity, though it will also put further strain on Social Security Trust Funds.

The legislation has been decades in the making but the push to pass it came together in the final weeks — and was completed in the final minutes — that lawmakers were in Washington before Congress resets next year. All Senate Democrats, as well as 27 Republicans, voted for the bill, giving it a final tally of 76-20.

“Millions of retired teachers and firefighters and letter carriers and state and local workers have waited decades for this moment. No longer will public retirees see their hard-earned Social Security benefits robbed from them,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

The bill repeals two provisions — the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset — that limit Social Security benefits for certain recipients if they receive retirement payments from other sources such as the public retirement program for a state or local government.

“Social Security is a bedrock of our middle class. It’s retirement security that Americans pay into and earn over a lifetime," said Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat who has pushed for the proposal for years and will leave Congress after losing reelection.

He added that the current restrictions make “no sense. These workers serve the public. They protect our communities. They teach our kids. They pay into Social Security just like everyone else."

People who currently have reductions in their Social Security benefits under the exceptions would soon see a boost in their monthly payments. But those increased payments would also add an estimated $195 billion to federal deficits over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Social Security Trust Funds were already estimated to be unable to pay out full benefits beginning in 2035, and the change will hasten the program’s insolvency date by about half a year. A typical dual-income couple retiring in 2033 would see an additional $25,000 lifetime reduction in their benefits, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Many of the bill's opponents acknowledged that the current reductions are not fair to public service retirees, but said they could not support the bill when the entire program faces challenges.

“We caved to the pressure of the moment instead of doing this on a sustainable basis,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who opposed the bill.

The policy changes will also heap more work on the Social Security Administration when the agency is already at its lowest staffing level in 50 years. The agency currently has a staff of about 56,400 — the lowest level since 1972, according to an agency spokesperson — even as it serves more people than ever. The stopgap government funding bill that also passed early Saturday did not include increased funding for the agency, which is currently in a hiring freeze.

Still, Republican supporters of the bill said there was a rare opportunity to address what they described as an unfair section of federal law that hurts public service retirees.

“They have earned these benefits. This is an unfair, inequitable penalty,” said Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican.

GOP supporters of the bill also said they would return to work on larger fixes to Social Security. President-elect Donald Trump, however, has said he will not touch the benefits, even as his administration looks to make deep budget cuts elsewhere.

Senate Republicans are nonetheless working on ideas that would put the program on better financial footing, but also inevitably require a scale-back in benefits. One fiscal hawk, Sen. Rand Paul, pushed Friday for a proposal to gradually raise the Social Security retirement age to 70, although a vote to add that provision to the bill only received three votes in favor of it.

“There's so much riding on us getting this right and having the courage to fix Social Security over the next few years,” Tillis said. “We will rue the day that we failed to do it.”

The Capitol is pictured in Washington, Friday, Dec. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)