First posted on Instagram
Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee has called out Senate Majority Leader John Thune for refusing to move his bill to stop American taxpayer money from reaching the Taliban, saying $40 million a week is still flowing to Kabul through aid channels more than three years after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Burchett’s bill, the No Tax Dollars for Terrorists Act, would cut off U.S. funds that end up benefiting the Taliban. The House has already passed the measure, but it has stalled in the Senate, where Thune, as majority leader, controls what reaches the floor.
“We’re giving the Taliban $40 million a week,” Burchett has said of the flow of money, describing a system in which weekly cash shipments go to the Afghanistan Central Bank and are taxed and taken by the Taliban. He says the money is routed through non-governmental organizations and United Nations aid programs, with the Taliban controlling the central bank and everything that passes through it.
The figures behind his claim come from the State Department itself, according to Burchett’s office. When his staff worked on the first version of the bill, they were told weekly cash shipments of around $40 million were being sent to the Afghanistan Central Bank. At a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing in December 2024, then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted that around $10 million had been paid to the Taliban in the form of taxes. Burchett has said that since December 2021, the United States has sent more than $5 billion in cash to Kabul.
The bill’s history stretches back to December 2023, when Burchett introduced the first version, H.R. 6586, which passed the House unanimously. He reintroduced it as H.R. 260, the No Tax Dollars for Terrorists Act, on January 10, 2025. The Senate version was introduced by Senators Tim Sheehy of Montana, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama and Bill Hagerty of Tennessee. The House Foreign Affairs Committee advanced the bill in April 2025, and Burchett has pressed for a Senate vote since, urging constituents in January 2026 to call their senators.
Burchett said on November 9 that he suspects the block in the Senate comes from a staffer, Tom West, a former ambassador to Afghanistan, and that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard denied West a security clearance because of his alleged ties to the Taliban. He also said Republican senators may be receiving kickbacks from Afghanistan. Those are Burchett’s claims; he presented them as his suspicion, not as established findings.
The United States remains the principal donor to a United Nations-led aid initiative that sends cash into Afghanistan as part of international relief efforts, and Burchett argues that the Taliban’s control of the country’s central bank means the money cannot reach ordinary Afghans without passing through the group.