US budget for 2020 to allocate USD 661 mission to ‘counter Russian malign influence’
US budget for 2020 to allocate USD 661 mission to ‘counter Russian malign influence’

US President Donald Trump may have found a way to get Democrats in the House to approve all of the State Department funding in his proposed $4.7 trillion budget for 2020: by labeling all sorts of things as “countering Russia.”

The budget request, published on Monday, says its State Department funding is “$12.3 billion or 23-percent decrease from the 2019 estimate.” Yet the same document also says the US government will allocate $661 million to “counter Russian malign influence” in Europe and Eurasia – nearly double the numbers for fiscal year 2019, Russia Today reports.

A closer look at some of the numbers contained in the document suggests both of those numbers are subject to accounting logic and fuzzy math. Rebranding some of the programs as “countering Russia” seems mostly intended to get approval from Russiagate-obsessed Democrats who currently control the House of Representatives and, therefore, the purse.