But they have been unable to do so. So what’s your theory of causation for why is agencies are ineffective?
I never said agencies are ineffective, I said that the lack of reduced budgets is not evidence of much of anything.
You did say agencies were ineffective, because republicans had made them ineffective. I’m asking you to offer a theory of how that could be the case. Their budgets are undiminished, and they’re run by democrats who believe in the agencies’ missions.
I did not say agencies are ineffective. I said GOP tries to dismantle federal agencies and insofar as they succeed, it yields dysfunction, which is of course the purpose of dismantling them (so it’s not bad faith). But this has almost nothing to do with saving money, as evidenced by the fact that GOP does not actually reduce budgets when they have the ability to.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/the-supreme-court...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/08/us/politics/trump-asylum-...
Also, entitlements like Social Security are an entirely separate category of spending, subject to different rules. That’s not what we’re talking about here.