However it would be pretty insane to argue that a citizen of a country should need to pay money for someone to fill out a basic tax return to pay taxes…
The rest of us hate it.
Complex political issues sometimes just come down to "I want my side to look good and I want the other side to look bad". In a system that treats Silicon Valley billionaires very differently to someone selling lumber in rural Ohio, sometimes that naked tribalism is the only thing that truly unites people in political parties.
Some people hate the IRS self-filing system because it works, and because the "other side" is taking credit for it.
On the other hand, creating an office whose sole objective is to destroy other functioning parts of the government and make it less useful to people? Totally moral.
Don't ask me, I'm not a conservative.
American Conservatives don't believe the government is evil, they believe that not having control over the government is evil. The slash and burning of agencies and departments isn't just due to a deep seated hatred, it's a need for control. And in order to have control you need consolidation.
American Conservatives have no problems with state governments vastly overreaching their authority or punishing cities. They have no issue with potentially taxing workers more to issue tax breaks for corporations. And they have no issue using the government to punish, stalk or harass dissidents.
Governments don't have a particularly good track record, so why give them the benefit of the doubt? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide
According to Rummel, democide surpassed war as the leading cause of non-natural death in the 20th century.
A government that is as weak as possible at least possesses less organizational capacity for murdering you when things inevitably go off the rails.
This take should lead to less government POWER and involvement in individual lives though and doesn't match with policy that empowers an astronomically sized "defense" budget, lawmakers deciding how every woman everywhere should deal with pregnancy and health issues that affect pregnancy, or giving unbridled, unreviewed access to every citizens personal and financial data to unelected, unaccountable oligarchs.
I actually agree with your take - I have a lot of conservative views like you described about how government is inherently hard and flawed and risky so we should use it sparingly.
We've seen so much flying in the face of this recently that I make a point of not calling republicans conservative anymore, not to be pithy but just to try to bring some grounding to these culture war arguments.
Why is your starting point not the default for most reasonable people - that the government is literally people from that society trying to manage their own affairs and to help each other when possible?
> Why is your default assumption that government will "go off the rails"?
It kind of is right now...
... but then again, I'm not a conservative ...
Doesn't seem particularly hard to justify that assumption right about now.
Because the government (at both state and federal levels) has been not this for several decades now. Legislative capture is wild stuff.
The state does not have an actual monopoly on violence, and never has. It merely provides a threat of organized, systematic retribution to try to prevent private-party violence. But that illegal violence still happens. Just at a lower rate than it would otherwise.
Remember that the alternative is not paradise, it is not a system that is "on the rails", it's everybody trying to murder you to get ahead. And in that world having a gun doesn't protect you - guns favor the one who shoots first. Does a tiny village from the past where everybody knows everybody and depends on everybody have that problem to a high degree, or need a large government? No. But that's not the world we live in.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
[1] Ok, I admit, nobody but me has actually made the intersection between the two yet.
In other words, there’s no point in arguing about the purpose. If you want the system to do something else, you have to change the system.
For a more traditional phrasing: "actions speak louder than words."
But the projects that are being funded today don’t resemble the ones in the 60s-80s. And thats not to suggest it previously was unbiased and now is politicized, but the parties and their values have changed. So that old bureaucratic organization has a new mission
Giving out crops promoted the idea that market capitalism brought prosperity. That isn’t enough for liberalism which has moved up Maslows hierarchy to meaning and purpose. Physical aid is merely a means for bringing the true goods - social justice, equity, inclusion, education, etc.
Or what to call the side-effects of a system going away.
One of the statistics I read was that the average American judges foreign aid at 31% of the Federal budget instead of the true 1%. In one way, that’s remarkable efficiency: 31x perception. In another way, it gives bad actors in the government an advantage: by cutting a measly 1%, you can rely on uninformed Americans to give you credit for 31x cuts.
Design for Prevention (2010) ISBN 978-0-937063-05-7
Friends in High Places (1990) ISBN 937063-06-1
Have Fun at Work (1988) ISBN 0-937063-05-3
The New Plague (1986) ISBN 0-937063-03-7
POSIWID is mentioned in the first three works; engineer William L. Livingston authored the latter three.
seems to be some sort of pathology
Ukraine would have been rejected slightly more politely by Harris. You're elevating a rhetorical difference to obscure that AIPAC primarying two democrats over their stance on israel gave republicans the house.
It sure would be nice to not have just a rhetorical difference over our most shame-ridden ally. But yea, Putin is dog walking trump into checks notes pushing for cutting military and nuclear stockpiles. Disgusting.
I hate Trump, but it's this conspiratorial crap about Putin while refusing to acknowledge AIPAC that makes me know moderates/centrists/maddow-watchers will always cave to ignorance and fear.
Straight from the russofascist playbook.
You can trivially look up donations. It's difficult to link to just AIPAC so I'll just put this here: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/09/aipac-republican-do...
Mind you, this is still a stronger case for another state blatantly interfering in our elections than the what $36 million to the NRA and a small buy of facebook ads (~$100k, which is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to domestic interests). And this alleged "kompromat" (good grief, read better propaganda)
Your apparent lack of tolerance for things that do not directly serve your self interest is short sighted and foolhardy. It's sad that your way of thinking has carried the day in the US.
Some of the spending probably does fit that description, but I bet if we had a truth oracle that could actually tell us, it would be a lot less than you think.
(I also happen to think that our polity should assist the least fortunate on its own merits, but you may not)
What does this mean?
I want exactly 0 of my dollars going to sex change operations in other countries.
I want $0 of my tax dollars going to bombs to Israel
I want $0 of my tax dollars spent on military bases abroad.
Let's curtail the big stuff and then we can pinch the pennies.
There are much bigger problems than gay people in Uganda in the world. Enough problems to eat up all the taxes Americans pay. You have to draw the line somewhere.
If people want to support that kind of charity, that’s their business. The government taking your money at gunpoint to do it is ridiculous.
If your aim is to decrease the number of refugees coming here, USAID is a big lever you can pull.
the people who voted for this eat this up
These are not "Your" tax dollars.
Some of them are other peoples tax dollars that do want this.
So do as my father had and claim that "your" taxes mean you "own" least 1 E4 and a couple of E-2/3's in the military--or whatever your preferred interest is and let the other American tax dollars pay for the things they want. Because You, personally, did not fund the entire US budget. It is not all "your" taxes.
Well then those people can take their money and donate it directly to the causes they care about. They do not need to use my tax money for it.
Yes actually some of this money WAS mine. I paid into this system (actually I was forced to under threat of violence), and I do not want my money being spent on this. I would rather keep my own money or have it used on paying down the national debt.
All money spent by the government is ultimately taxation, if it doesn’t come directly from taxpayers it comes from us in the form of inflation. i.e. printing more money than there is value in the economy.
You were only "forced" to if you wanted to continue to enjoy the benefit of being a US citizen/working in the US. I love a good anti-tax American essay just as much as the next person, but I also love this country and will pay my due even when that due pays for the salaries of politicians and their staff that I don't agree with (I don't want my taxes to pay for them--but life as an adult can be hard); you really do not come off as someone that wants to be a part of that or this country, but on an libertarian island. You may be more interested in Seasteading[0]
If you don't like being a contributing member of the US (who by acts of bipartisanship in US congress decided where the money goes), you are free to renounce your citizenship (assuming you are a citizen) and leave the country; if you are already outside the country then you are almost there, simply hand in your passport and file the paper work at the nearest US embassy. And never pay US taxes again. Problem solved.
No, those dollars have been extorted from you fair and square. You have no control over who gets the spoils.
You don't get to dictate that to other people after going on a rant specifically about gay people. I mean you can, but nobody's gonna buy it. You need to realize that perception is reality, and the perception here is you are very narrow minded. More concerned with taking condoms away from gay people than you are with saving your own country from a 20 year old gang of fascists who stole your SSN on a USB stick and stood up a blank WordPress site to brag about it.
— $6.3 million for men who have sex with men in South Africa
See, you can't paraphrase to add (what you view as) negative connotation and then claim "I have nothing against gay people." The money did not go to South Africa with the earmark "so gay men can have sex with gay men." It went to something you don't see the value in. It went to something you think is unimportant. Like HIV medication, or STD prevention, or treatment, or gasp a $.50 condom that maybe prevented a diesease. The takeaway for you is this; your anti-LGBT bias clearly shows through. You are not as middle-of-the-road as you think you are. Sir, you are brainwashed. This is not about cost. This is about regulating others and preventing lifestyles you disagree with from having access to medical care. You think that by deincentivizing LGBTQ activities you can regulate LGBTQ culture. Good luck.
> We voted to cut all of this garbage
Yeah, well we both voted for a lot of this garbage that was created by a BYPARTISAN ACT OF CONGRESS. Your orange clown has no right acting like a king in a country that we all built together. Your vote shouldn't be able to erase all of mine. The government was built with checks and balances. Respect them.
HIV-positive gay men are at a higher risk of transmission for obvious reasons [2] and I can think of a lot of good reasons for the US to want to fight infectious diseases in other countries.
I assume the $6.3 million is really $4.3 million here[3], of which $1.9 million was given to 'OUT LGBT WELL-BEING'[4] for 'ENGAGE MEN’S HEALTH: COMPREHENSIVE HEALTH SERVICES FOR MSM IN SOUTH AFRICA ACTIVITY'.
If you look at the health services they provide in [4] it's testing/screening for HIV, it's HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, etc. In 2021 they had two mobile health teams providing those services to gay men. [5][page 14]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV_adult_prevalence_rate
[2] https://hivinfo.nih.gov/understanding-hiv/fact-sheets/hiv-an...
[3] https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_72067423FA00008_7...
[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20240715043923/https://out.org.z...
[5] https://out.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/OUT_Annual_Rep...
https://www.vice.com/en/article/dry-sex-is-the-african-sexua...
It's like the entire existence of a swath of the population has become about ensuring gay people get no consideration and no trans person ever plays a women's sport. That's it. And, if it takes replacing democracy with fascism, well dammit, it's worth it.
There is no woke mind virus. But there's certainly an anti-woke mind virus.
Trump wants to end all federal disaster relief.
[1](https://stocktonia.org/news/california-water/2025/02/01/trum...)
$350k (out of $2 million) was given to ASOCIACION LAMBDA. Yes, gender affirming care is mentioned in the description but that could mean almost anything. [1]
If you look at what they promote it's mostly about gender equality and protecting people from violence. Workshops, safe spaces, collecting statistics, some HIV testing stuff. [2][3][4][5]
I'm not saying it's impossible but I haven't seen any evidence and the people making the claims are known chronic liars.
And most of FEMA's budget was not spent on housing illegal migrants. Disaster relief funding is separate and much larger than Shelter and Services Program funding[6][7][8], as ordered by Congress in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023. [9]
[1] https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_72052024FA00001_7...
[2] https://www.asociacion-lambda.org/
[3] https://www.instagram.com/asoclambda/
[4] https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/featurestori...
[5] https://gt.usembassy.gov/2023-human-rights-report-guatemala/
[6] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/false-claims-f...
[7] https://apnews.com/article/fema-migrants-nyc-funding-luxury-...
[8] https://www.fema.gov/grants/preparedness/shelter-services-pr...
[9] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/2617...
How hard is it to understand we shouldn’t be spending money on foreigners when Americans go without? That seems like a basic rule that everyone agrees with.
And “most of FEMA’s money” is a cop out. 0% of FEMA’s money should be spent on anything other than Americans in need after a disaster.
It’s this kind of “oh, come on it’s not a big deal” that resulted in the trouncing the Democrats got. It’s talking down to Americans like they are stupid.
"I-don't-want-to-fund-sex-changes" is an emotional and possibly moral argument, it's made to get people angry at how their money is being spent.
Not wanting to spend money on foreigners at all is a completely different argument, that's generally not made probably because you get similar emotional arguments of feeding starving children. Or you get non-emotional arguments like projecting soft power and fighting disease epidemics before they reach us.
We're a nation of laws. The USAID and FEMA money is set in law by Congress. I disagree with how a lot of money is spent too. But that's why we vote and communicate to our representatives and have them change the law.
Bill Clinton's administration reduced the deficit and had a surplus. It reduced the federal workforce. It decreased spending and increased revenue. But it was done legally by working with both parties and unions and passing bills in Congress.
Yes Congress sets spending, but the executive is responsible for executing on the law. Biden should have gone back to Congress (if needed) and said “no, this money is for Americans”. But he didn’t even try.
Which is why nobody should be surprised so many voters support what Musk and Trump are doing - they are doing what many voters think is the right thing to do.
Americans are just tired of politicians excuses.
There's a FEMA program, created in 1987 for Americans, call the Emergency Food and Shelter Program.
In 2019, during the first Trump administration, Congress passed additional funding for EFSP-H (Humanitarian) to expand the program to migrant families.[1]
Then in 2022, under the Biden administration, Congress decided to move that into a new separate CBP/FEMA program which is the Shelter and Services Program.[2]
I would be all for an administration that forces Congress to create a budget that decreases spending and increases revenue (or at least maintains revenue) in order to decrease the deficit (or at least decrease the rate of deficit growth).
So far there's no evidence this administration is doing that. But we don't have a fleshed out budget bill to look at yet either.
Americans might be tired of politicians' excuses but it's my opinion, from the (lack of) evidence so far, that we're being misled: the rich will get richer, government services will be worse, our democratic rules will be weaker, and the national debt will still increase. Hopefully my opinion is wrong.
[1] https://www.fema.gov/grants/emergency-food-and-shelter-progr...
If they had communicated they wanted to balance the budget to provide for Americans that would be one thing, but they have communicated they will instead cut taxes for corporations with the money saved from Medicaid and foreign aid. Americans will have to go without more.
Cool, so you're cutting all corporate welfare, closing all US military bases in foreign countries, and ceasing sending bombs to Israel then, right? Or does it only count as spending money on foreigners when it's something you don't like?
How hard is to start with this argument? Elon Musk is certainly making more Americans "go without" than he is cutting off "overseas sex changes".
I don't know how true this is, and if there really is 2.7T of "improper" payments, then yeah that needs to be stop.
The issue is that Musk just makes shit up. All the time, I genuinely think it might be a pathological problem. He lies about everything. He said "full self driving" would be available in Tesla "next year" in 2018, he claimed he'd have stuff on the moon by 2022, he faked a press release about robots, he publicly posted about taking Tesla private to drive up the stock price. I could go on, but I don't want to spend three hours typing this out.
So if DOGE is claiming 2.7T of Medicare fraud, it's tough for me to take it seriously because Musk is known for constantly lying. He also has shown a complete lack of understanding of very basic US civics. So even if he isn't "lying", it's entirely possible that he just doesn't understand what the fuck he's talking about, and declaring all this stuff as superfluous.
Largely the justification is the programs don't do what Musk says they do.
You've got to understand the source of your information is from habitual liars. The Tesla's autopilot [1] marketing video still starts of with "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself". That person in the driver's seat had to take control of the car numerous times include one time where the car drove off the road and struck a fence. These are not people whose word you can take at face value.
Anybody can throw together a list but it doesn't make it real.
https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_72052024FA00001_7...
> ACTIVITY TO STRENGTHEN TRANS-LED ORGANIZATIONS TO DELIVER GENDER-AFFIRMING HEALTH CARE
This is 2M of my tax dollars that was/is being sent to Guatemala for gender affirming care. Which is sex change operations and hormones.
> ACTIVITY TO STRENGTHEN TRANS-LED ORGANIZATIONS TO DELIVER GENDER-AFFIRMING HEALTH CARE, ADVOCATE FOR IMPROVED QUALITY AND ACCESS TO SERVICES, AND PROVIDE ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT OPPORTUNITIES.
It's 2M for a lot of things. And let's be real, you didn't pay 2M in taxes, you don't really get to say this is "your" tax dollars. This is a lot of people's money, and they may want their money to go to these things. Why do you get the final say?
The quote you have starts of with "Activity to strengthen" which is uh incredibly vague. Like if you provide say _leadership training_ that sounds like an activity that could strengthen an organization as well as create individuals that could organize to promote Democratic values in their home country and promote good will towards the US for helping them out (unlike say what goes on in Iran). So there's so far no evidence it's surgery or pills.
Even if it is strictly gender-affirming care that does not mean it's surgery and pills. Gender affirming care is more vague than that [1].
And then finally, even if somehow none of the funds are for "ADVOCATE FOR IMPROVED QUALITY AND ACCESS TO SERVICES, AND PROVIDE ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT OPPORTUNITIES." (the part you left off) and the funds for "ACTIVITY TO STRENGTHEN TRANS-LED ORGANIZATIONS TO DELIVER GENDER-AFFIRMING HEALTH CARE" are strictly for surgeries; there appears to be ~0.95% of the US identifying as transgender so spending 0.0000002% of the federal budget seems uh fair (or really 0.00000006% of the federal budget because it's over 3 years while the budget is annual).
---
Ol' Musk isn't working at Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity, or any of his other companies right now. He has the time to ask people and figure out if it's actually sex-changes or something else (it's always something else btw).
[1]: https://opa.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/2025-02/gender-affir...
The “services” here is gender affirming care. What does it mean to “advocate”? Why are my tax dollars being used for this?
Yes it is vague, the vagueness just helps to strengthen the argument that this is probably a waste of taxpayer dollars.
> just $350,000
“ONLY 350k”
Dude 350k is a lot of money, and yeah, by canceling the contract we actually saved the American tax payers the remainder of the money. This is great news and we can use that money towards paying down the national debt or returning it to the hardworking American people.
I want none of my tax dollars to go towards any part of the description.
Your argument seems to be “it’s not very much money”. And you’re not understanding that we the American people do not want any of our tax money being wasted on this. This is why you lost the election, and in the long term you will continue to lose future elections if you don’t change the attitude towards this stuff.
Answer the question honestly, if a politician campaigned on promising to send taxpayer money for gender affirming care in foreign countries, do you think that they would get more or less votes on net because of it?
> so spending 0.0000002% of the federal budget
The only acceptable % of my tax dollars that should go to a foreign nation for trans care is 0%.
I pay a lot of taxes, and the signaling from the left is always that I need to “pay my fair share” and that taxes are so good because they are used to pay for roads and bridges and schools etc.
But when we actually start examining where the dollars are going we get into weird arguments about soft power and gender affirming care in foreign nations. And your arguments for paying our fair share don’t hold up at all anymore because these dollars are not even going to help Americans, this is basically charity for foreign countries. It’s easy to be charitable when you’re spending other people’s money. I bet you are not donating your own personal money to “advocate” for gender affirming care in Guatemala.
You should ask Elon Musk since he brought up the program and has the ability to actually ask people on it what it's about.
It should really be telling that the heads of say USAID have been replaced with politically sympathetic individuals and yet they can't surface any memos or etc that are red flags and instead have to rely on portions of headlines?
----
> Dude 350k is a lot of money,
If somebody has a severed artery and also a paper cut you need to ignore the paper cut to repair the artery.
There is a significant amount of time being wasted on saving 0.000000004% of the federal budget. There are straight up 4 solutions to balancing the budget and none of this nickel and dimeing will get close (especially after the next round of Trump tax cuts).
1 - Cut Military
2 - Cut Medicaid / Medicare
3 - Cut Social Security
4 - Raise taxes to pre-Reagan levels
----
> It’s easy to be charitable when you’re spending other people’s money.
1) Elon doesn't pay anything in taxes [1] so he really should't have a say in how they're spent.
2) Compromise / Pork Barrel [2] is largely how congress works; you get votes on things you want in exchange for things other people want. Reneging on things congress as a group agreed to later on is bad faith.
3) There hasn't been any evidence provided that the program wasn't authorized by congress or isn't achieving any policy goals.
[1]: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trov...
You can audit all of this without immediately shutting down in-flight programs that save lives. You can say "we're going to go line by line and cut programs that we think are not properly spent".
But they in their arrogance, ignorance, malice, or all three, have been on an ideological war against agencies as a whole. Musk brags about trying to destroy 18F and the IRS free file system. They're trying to tear apart the entire department of education. They're trying to fire anyone who isn't explicitly loyal to the wannabe dictator in chief.
And I'll tell ya, it's not because of spending.
Let me be clear: there are right ways and wrong ways to cut spending. Doing it illegally with a bunch of unvetted fake-ass hackers and by stopping all government functions and installing loyalists isn't the way to do it.
>I am so far definitely satisfied with the progress.
I don't think it's good for the country to shut down agencies illegally on a whim, set up the mayor of NYC to be blackmailed at the drop of a hat, pause enforcement of foreign bribery laws, or hire political loyalists as tools of retribution to lead the DoJ and FBI.
But what do I know about helping the middle class or maintaining our place in the world?
So you've never heard of the Government Accountability Office, huh? This is literally its purpose.
It’s the finance arm of the deep state.
See secretly creating a Cuban Twitter to bring down the government there: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZunZuneo
One example among hundreds
It has meddled in domestic politics as well, in the past against the democrats, currently against the republicans. Whoever is against the aims of the deep state.
One day you’ll realise and don’t be too hard on yourself then. You were not the only one.
It wasn’t perfect, but it’s going to look like a Utopia after these guys are done with us.
Funny that your sentiments align so closely with theirs, and that you're cheering on our disempowerment as much as they are.
I'm sorry that "Black ops" hurt your feelings, but the world is a rough place. There are meanies out there. We're not perfect, but I'll take America.
But, here's an idea: why don't you get on your soapbox and tell the Russians or Chinese or Iranians to stand down first? Come back and let us know how it went.
Indeed, "Americans" like you seem to be the only ones more excited than our adversaries about the prospect of defanging our national intelligence/security apparatus.
Grow up. Seriously.
Funny to hear people parrot that term, when they clearly have no idea about the machinations of government, national security, etc.
"Deep state" is obviously a bogeyman, manufactured (likely by a foreign adversary) to allow a corrupt regime to destroy our government, our democracy, and our way of life in plain sight.
This term was artificially injected into the political lexicon just a few short years ago, yet the flock has internalized their deep anger around it as if it's been part of a personal, lifelong struggle that has destroyed generations of their families.
Meanwhile, the same leaders who championed the term engage in frank corruption and are openly realigning our nation with adversaries who don't share our national values, by creed.
The "deep state" is what is in full view with the Trump/Musk/Miller Administration.
If you look at the budget, everything is "just pennies" yet somehow it's 2T deficit with 7T total expenditures. If you were to drill into the big programs (Medicare, Social Security, Defense, etc) there are thousands of programs nested within those.
Like it or not someone will need to do the hard work of going line-by-line and accumulating savings to make the budget make sense. There also needs to be a culture shift in gov't. It's not monopoly money---something obvious no?
The whole budget is made up of pennies. It’s a lazy talking point to say they don’t matter and what’s even worse is the politicians see no issue with wasting pennies of tax payer money! Any waste should be condemned.
And like you said you’ll never balance the budget unless you go line by line. As a tax payer I’d love a balanced budget by getting a punch of pennies and keeping core programs the same versus cutting core programs because “it’s too hard” to look at the pennies.
Since we don’t have a definition for waste, going through finding it is an ideological exercise.
What you’re advocating for is an ideological purge for your team, but you wouldn’t be so excited if you didn’t agree with the ideology.
There is plenty of waste in the budget and “nice to have programs”. You only need to look at the list of things being cut.
And of course it’s ideological! People vote for a President with certain values and they follow those. It’s how it’s supposed to work.
> People vote for a President with certain values and they follow those. It’s how it’s supposed to work.
That is not according to the Constitution. The President's role is to faithfully implement the laws. All of them, including the ones he and his voters don't like. He doesn't get to declare laws null and void by not enforcing them. For instance, if voters elect a racist, that doesn't mean it's legal for POTUS to then not enforce civil rights laws.
You want my list? Critical government services. That’s it. Nothing more. I’m sure you won’t see the police, public health, state dept, as waste.
And Republicans were voted in on an agenda to cut this sort of stuff. So sure, it would be great to hold hands on this but that’s not how our system works.
And yes, Congress sets a budget and laws with very high level instructions. The President’s job is to implement.
So when the law says “Congress approves $50B for FEMA in order to provide Americans with disaster relief”, the President has discretion on what “implement disaster relief” looks like. And the President is not forced to spend money on waste or fraud.
So what happens if money is left over? Like all things in politics it comes down to the details. Maybe Trump brings his new budget back to Congress and tells them to pass a much smaller budget. Maybe it goes to court and a new pathway for returning funds is created. I don’t know.
But crying “Constitution crisis!” When the President, with all the powers of the Executive, decides on how to run the Executive (within the bounds of the law), is going to fall flat among voters, especially when the President actions are exactly what the voters asked for.
Nope, I want to defund all of that. I want 0 of my tax dollars going to that waste. Police is abuse. Public health is a fraud. State Department is waste. Our points of view are irreconcilable, we need a system to resolve our differences civilly.
> So sure, it would be great to hold hands on this but that’s not how our system works.
The totality of our laws and system of government were decided iteratively by majorities representing all sides at some point. The President doesn't get to come in and decide all the laws passed by Democrats in the past are "waste and fraud" which seems to be what he's trying to do. The way to change the law is to go through Congress, but of course changing the law is much harder than not implementing.
> Congress sets a budget and laws with very high level instructions. The President’s job is to implement.
His job according to the Constitution is to implement "faithfully", meaning it's not his will that he's carrying out, it's the will of Congress. We already have an IG system to give Congress feedback on whether the agencies are running how they see fit, but Trump just gutted that. That's not the behavior of someone faithfully implementing the laws for Congress, that's the behavior of someone implementing laws for himself.
> But crying “Constitution crisis!” When the President, with all the powers of the Executive
What they are doing is not one of the powers. The Constitution does not allow for this, the law does not allow for this either. They are breaking the law.
For about 99.9999% of those things there's no evidence they were wasteful or fraudulent. They just say they cut those and they claim they are wasteful and fraudulent. So far there has been very little, if any, evidence of that. There have been quite a few lies.
And on top pf that they cut actual critical programs like National Nuclear Security Administration (something they scrambled to undo) which shows that they have very little insight into what they do.
DOGE exists to cut programs that the current administration does not like. Thats it. Its entirely political.
The fact that treasury allowed 4.7T to go out the door without a description or traceability should say enough.
Bottomline, there is a lot of nonsense going on.
Culture: One of my army buddies tells me that they must use up all the ammo at the end of the year so that they can request more budget the following year.
Government is clearly corrupt, we've just legalized (and normalized) graft. It's funny that the same people that criticized corporations about graft under Bush-era republicans, now believe that government programs are above reproach.
All the cuts are going to the right place :)
Also, you think that rich people won't use the government to get more money? Seriously?
Have you… have you ever met a wealthy person?
Second, spending is done by Congress. If you don’t like the spending cut it through proper channels we don’t get to decide not to fund something once’s it’s been allocated.
You hit the nail on the head. Tens of billions going to “aid” while Americans who are victims of disasters get a small check and a “sorry, that’s all we can do”.
The American people aren’t stupid. When you hear complaints about a lack of trust in the government, it’s because the government has destroyed that trust.
So when Trump says “American first” many voters say “yes, finally”.
What Trump and Musk are doing is wildly popular among voters. They are doing what the establishment has said they tried and failed.
The Democrats are trying all sorts of messaging about a “Constitutional crisis” when they have show they only care when it’s in their interest and voters are ignoring them. And most amazingly is the Democratic leadership haven’t said a single thing about the waste - not even a “yeah, this shouldn’t happen”.
Trump and Musk will continue to be popular as long as they keep delivering on their promises. All while HN gripes and grumbles.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/money-saved-by-canceling-pr...
But yes, the parties have different definitions of waste, and the Republicans were voted in by voters so they get to determine what is waste right now.
Can’t you see how the system is supposed to work? It’s not one person determining waste, it’s voters electing Trump who then determines what is waste.
Not the way they're doing, no. The Executive's job is to execute the laws passed by governments elected since the founding of the country, by Democrats and Republicans and all other parties. Republicans don't get to come in and just enforce the laws they agree with ideologically. If this is truly how the system works going forward, then when the pendulum swings the next guy will cut everything he doesn't like in the name of rooting out ill defined "waste and fraud" of the opposite party.
We live in a country split down the middle, Congress is split, and Trump was elected at a slim margin of less than 2%. You can't govern a country of 340 million people by ignoring the the priorities of half of them, even though they pay into the system just the same as everyone else. That's why we elect Representatives and have a Congress to debate these things and find compromise.
1. The President isn’t forced to spend money on waste and fraud.
2. Most laws are written incredibly vague and high level. “$50B funding for FEMA as a disaster relief for Americans” leaves the President a hell of a lot of room to maneuver and stay within the wording of the law.
I do agree there is a big question mark on “if the President has fulfilled the law but money is left over, what happens?” or “the President says the law is fulfilled by members of Congress disagree”.
Presumably the courts will hammered out all those details, with restrictions put on the President such that a process is put around it. I also suspect the courts will tell Congress “do your god damn job if you want to specify exact spending”.
The president doesn't have to spend on fraud but he doesn't get to decide lawful Congressional agencies like CFPB and USAID are "waste" by his own metric, and shut them down unilaterally.
> 2. Most laws are written incredibly vague and high level.
And that's why there is some discretion here, often times encoded within the agency itself. If they agency is not doing what it's designed to do, we have an entire oversight system to handle that. IGs are there specifically for that purpose, but Trump fired them all. How does that advance the mission of finding waste fraud and abuse? Of course it doesn't because that's not the mission, the mission is an ideological purge.
> restrictions put on the President such that a process is put around it.
Under what authority? Trump and Musk claim absolute authority over the executive, so any restrictions would be unlawful in their eyes. In fact they claim the right to have no process whatsoever, which is how they're currently operating.
Those agencies still exist, they have just been shrunked down. For USAID, it's folded under State.
> If the agency is not doing what it's designed by Congress to do, we have an entire oversight system to handle that. IGs are there specifically for that purpose, but Trump fired them all.
No, that's not the role of the IG. The IG is focused on financial and management audits. It doesn't determine whether an agency is fulfilling the law set by Congress.
That's the job of the courts and Congress, which they can still do.
> Trump and Musk claim absolute authority over the executive, so any restrictions would be unlawful in their eyes.
Trump does have absolute authority over the executive. It's in the Constitution. He also has the ability to delegate his authority to US government employees like Musk.
However the President has obligations to execute the laws passed by Congress. Both the legislative (Congress) and judicial (courts) are the check on the executive and have a number of levers they can pull if Trump violates the Constitution.
This is all US civic 101 here.
The 2024 federal deficit was 1.8 trillion I am willing to bet a donation to GiveWell that 2025 will higher. You want to take the other side?
All of DOGE is just "I don't like these programs, so I am going to call them waste". None of those programs are wasteful that you listed, you just don't like them. How about you substantiate how any of these programs are corrupt or wasteful.
I wouldn't say they're "burning things down for the sake of burning things down", though. The truth is somewhere between what you and gp are contending. There's no moral framework, but there is a framework. They're burning things down so that "the free market" can replace the things they burn down and capture the money that used to go towards doing those things for the public good, and instead do those things for a private profit.
I strongly feel like these guys see what happened in Russia and see it as a success: the "weak" soviet union was replaced by a "strong" Putin-controlled Russia. The collapse in living standards, lawlessness, etc, was acceptable collateral damage.
It is kind of funny that the people who complain about the "deep state" with some kind of goal actually create something similar with an actual goal.
If the fear of fascism raised by some is accurate, it seems more likely we'll see these agencies gutted and rebuilt as whatever the Trump administration wants them to be instead. No smaller government, just a different one.
I live in D.C. and many of my neighbors are non-political civil servants of all kinds. All signs point to a dramatically smaller and weaker federal government without congressional action.
Whether these agencies that congress created and funded for decades will continue to exist in any meaningful way is de facto getting decided by congress right now.
The Vought/Musk group has fired 200,000 employees already, and is offloading real-estate as quickly as possible. That action is consistent with gutting, but not rebuilding, these agencies.
So congress either has to exercise its power over the executive to prevent this in the next few weeks, or the loss of capacity will have occurred and rebuilding will take many years and be dramatically more costly than maintenance would have been.
Were those full-time employees or contractors of some type?
Normally I would just look this up myself, but things have been moving so quickly that the info I find is all over the place and I haven't found a short list of sources to trust.
My understanding was that they "offered" early retirement, not sure how much of an option it was versus a demand. I had also heard they cancelled a lot of contract work, I wouldn't consider that being fired but yeah it does still impact people similarly.
That was an earlier wave, but things are moving so quickly it's understandable people are getting confused. The two hundred thousand terminated I referred to above are (roughly) all the employees in their probationary period (which is typically two years, but it varies by position) across the whole federal public sector workforce.
If we were to include contractors (e.g. USAID contractors), more than two hundred thousand people have been terminated by executive action since the start of the administration.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/15/trump-purges-real-w...
Unfortunately this kind of comes with the territory when granting power to an authority - jobs can be created, they can also be taken away.
Whether this is "right" for our country is probably a matter of perspective, but I do feel for everyone impacted directly. This is a pretty shitty situation to find yourself in and I don't know what the job market will look for them short term - if its anything like tech the last year or so its pretty miserable.
Elon is literally closing agencies like the CFPB and USAID down, in defiance of congress and the law. They are working under a legal theory that the president can do that, and are expecting their stacked supreme court to agree with them.
Is he? I mean this as an honest question, things have moved quickly enough that its hard to keep up.
My understanding that they have been temporarily closing offices or stopping work. I wouldn't consider that as "literally closing agencies" though, at least for me that reads as closing them down permanently rather than temporarily closing the doors.
I don't ask this to defend what they're doing at all. I think we could be much worse off if they're only gutting the agencies without closing them completely.
The executive branch has been given an immense amount of authority over the last half century or so, if that is used to rebuild different agencies technically still fulfilling congressional mandates for USAID or CFPB we could be in for a rude awakening.
Authority is fine when you agree with it, but as soon as the wrong person has that same power you may find you wish it was never granted in the first place.
Most of them were pretty weakly defined and they were given legal precedent to define what their own authority was (unless specifically defined by Congress). The departments could be kept with more clear definitions of what they need to do and what success looks like.
That isn't clear yet from what I've seen. Destroying or knee capping departments is one thing rebuilding them as private or functionally private organizations is another level.
If they are planning to do this I don't think we've seen any direct signs of it yet, though I don't know how it could be anything other than fascism at that point.
Because they are, in fact, obviously constitutional. The mechanism for eliminating them contemplated by the constitution is for congress to pass a law eliminating them.
If you disagree with my view on this, perhaps you'll be persuaded by voluminous case law over decades upholding the constitutionality of all of these Federal government agencies in face of challenges of precisely the kind you're motioning toward.
At this point I feel like anyone who disagrees with this should explain how things work in the alternative. If the executive can just unilaterally declare laws invalid, how does anything get done? Why pass laws at all?
There is gray area when Congress says we need a department to manage our education system, for example, and sets a budget. Congress is only approving the spending there, at least to me that means it can be spent but doesn't have to be spent in full.
Now it is the executive branch's job to execute on that department. I think it would be a stretch for them to just not create the department. Their job is to properly and effectively implement what congress asked for though, and it is reasonable for someone coming in to say that what was done in the past isn't meeting Congress's request.
That isn't to say Trump is making a legitimate or reasoned argument in that vein, but the power is there at which point you have a weird legal battle attempting to decide who can make a better case for the success of any specific department. With congress defining little to no metrics for success that battle seems largely to be in the eye of the beholder.
You are welcome to imagine an alternate legal system from first principles, but please do not present it as U.S. law. The question of whether president has to "[spend] in full" has been settled by legislation and litigation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Budget_and_Impou...
> Their job is to properly and effectively implement what congress asked for though
No it is not. Their job as laid out in the Constitution is to faithfully implement the laws. Not "properly and effectively", where what's proper and effective are determined by them. "Faithfully" is the word used in the Constitution.
They are to implement the laws for Congress, and if the executive finds those laws sloppy and wasteful and not proper, he doesn't get to just not do them. Again, I ask you, why pass laws at all if the executive can just decide to not do them?
> but the power is there at which point you have a weird legal battle attempting to decide who can make a better case for the success of any specific department
There is no battle -- it's there in a plain reading of the Constitution, and the impoundment act of 1974 makes explicit. And even what you say is true, there should be more of a process for the Executive branch to do these things; because the power is so broad, in the spirit of checks and balances they should be conferring with the Congress rather than asserting blanket and unchecked authority.
Sure, we can debate semantics here if you want. I'm fine swapping in "faithfully execute" into my prior comment though, that's basically what I meant without going word for word constitutional.
My point remains though. "Faithful execution" is in the eye of the beholder and is up for debate. One person may see the Department of Education as faithfully executing the congressional mandate while another could see it as poorly run, inefficient, or point to our education level relative to other countries. Both would have good arguments to make.
Further, I don't read Congress's power to approve the budget as part of the mandate for a department. Congress isn't saying "spend XX billion and build an education department," they're saying "build an education department and don't spend more than XX."
That can surely be debated in a legal context, but I think you would be hard pressed to find many average people that would read a budget as a "spend every penny" mandate. Many corporations operate this way, and while in my experience people will spend their full budget to avoid a decrease next year they are also well aware of the absurdity of that.
The impoundment law itself was/is controversial and this will surely be challenged in court on those grounds. The question still remains, though, whether any miscarriage of the law us found in departments being shut down. Its too early, mainly because they at least appear to be acting rashly, but that doesn't mean these departments have been faithfully executing to date.
The semantics here are everything, it's the debate. What does the Constitution mean and what was the purpose of America? We've reached ground zero here.
To me, the purpose of America is a government for the people made possible by checks and balances -- separating powers so that they can't be abused, and giving the people ultimate choice.
Maybe you disagree, because that's not what you are suggesting. If we give in to your reading of the Constitution, the executive has the most power of all branches, which shifts power away from the people in a dramatic way.
I've asked you three times now, and you have evaded the central question -- if the executive can pick and choose laws to enforce, defund departments at whim, what is the point of laws at all?
I suspect you haven't answered it directly because you'd have to admit your reading of the Constitution implies a monarchy. And that's why we are debating semantics now, depending on how the words are interpreted we either have a system of checks and balances, or we have unbalanced unchecked power in the executive branch.
> The impoundment law itself was/is controversial
Yeah, it was controversial among people who didn't want to follow the law, and instead wanted to use their power to go around it. The concept of checks and balances is not popular with the people being checked.
As a comparison, in my country you could submit your own tax return using government supplied desktop software since 1999, and in 2015 that software was replaced with a web product. 1 in 3 people submit their own tax returns using this product.
[0] https://thisisunpacked.substack.com/p/irs-direct-tax-filing-...
The corruption era is very simple: the government won't be allowed to directly provide a service that someone else could make $$$$ by being a middleman for.
It's somewhat ludicrous to have to "file taxes" in the computer era in the first place, but there's a large ideological resistance to both taxes and the government that in some of the more paranoid wings of the country that is well-exploited by the rent-seekers here.
Time will tell but there's evidence that some government staff grew inexplicably wealthy while in office which would suggest corruption. Corruption in government is terrible for the average citizen, ask anyone from a country that suffers from a lot of it.
I really fail to see why auditing government spending is a bad thing?
I am not a Trump voter. I agree with the outcome they have stated - reduce stupid spending - but I have no idea thats the true motivation, the true goal and I disagree with the manner in which they are doing it. Just because you agree with the dictator doesn't make it right?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/us/politics/trump-orders-...
It's barely started and the corruption is everywhere. It's blatant and out in the open, and it's disgusting.
I'm going to a protest today. I encourage others to do the same.
But you know what? All of these agencies are regularly audited. Every year, reports are all published. This is how it works https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/reports-statements/financial...
Elon is operating an ideological mission conducted unprofessionally and with complete contempt for any public oversight.
Those are a bunch of weasel words. You're giving a certain impression yet being vague enough that it's impossible to assess, argue or discuss the validity of that claim.
What evidence? Who are those 'some' staff? What's inexplicably wealthy?
There's a vast difference between government high-ups getting paid well and making money (as high-ups in any large organization might) and government organizations and their leadership and staff being generally corrupt.
Of course corruption is never impossible, partially because it can take forms that may be difficult to discern as such. But it's again impossible to assess that claim without substance.
I'm just saying it's not that deep. There is not a meaning or moral that needs to be understood, there is no reasoning that could make them change their ways.
Following Trump’s second term, the fresh-money establishment saw an opportunity to challenge the old guard. Setting aside their differences, they chose to unite.
https://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-defense-contr...
>The group, which could announce strategic partnerships next month, would seek to bring Silicon Valley-style disruption to an industry dominated by so-called "prime" contractors, such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.
They were soon joined by other tech moguls—Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Gates—who once opposed Trump but now see AI as their chance to wrest power from the old establishment.
The difference between sports and politics is that sports are always a duel, while politics, despite appearances, is always a three-player game.
If you go to the doge website right now, there's a Libs of TikTok tweet shown on the main page. It reads:
The US government only recognizes two sexes: Male and Female. This needs to be changed immediately
There is absolutely a crusade going on, but I certainly wouldn't call it moral.
Who in their right mind opens up RDP and Citrix servers to public internet in DoE and nuclear research laboratory networks?
Time is running very short. Foreign powers must be assumed to already hold all possible information about the US government, including nuclear secrets, warfare capabilities, emergency plans, and kompromat of all personnel and political oversight.
It won’t be long before the US nuclear arsenal mysteriously disappears.
You can use Shodan yourself to verify.
1. To people saying that the government should have a direct way to file taxes. This is an outdated way of thinking. Most ordinary people shouldn't have to file taxes at all. Withholding is sufficient for income taxes and taxes on liquid investments.
2. 18F was an openly partisan organisation. They were likely disbanded not to kill the products they produced, but rather for their inability to remain politically neutral.
It’s normal in many countries to not have to file until your tax situation becomes more complicated.
For most people, your employer handles your income tax on your behalf, your stock broker handles your capital gains tax etc.
It’s an XY problem, and direct file is like the faster horse.
Heck, the Trump admin wants to get rid of income tax entirely, so they're hardly the natural allies of the tax prep industry.
If Elon wanted he could fund an opensouce alternative to Turbotax.
I am willing to bet 1k that Intuit's 2024 TurboTax Online and other Consumer Group revenue of $4.4 billion will remain above 4B in 2025.
I might buy that line of thinking for a corporation but the direct file program was about individuals. Elon gleefully tweeted about how that had been deleted. That's a direct give away to TurboTax and H&R Block.
The issue isn't direct file vs TurboTax.
It's whether most individuals should have to file at all.
A few tweaks around employment income and capital gains, and you can do away with filing altogether for most people.
You’re just being obtuse. We can stop now.
The history of lobbying on behalf of the tax prep industry is easy enough to find.
Is drawing a line through Trump's well-professed love of sycophants and people who make him money and that lobbying and motivation, to their current actions, so far fetched to you?
I think taking a wait-and-see approach to things like "Trump wants to get rid of income tax entirely" would be wise until we see where the implementation ends up. In the meantime lets talk about what has actually been done to date.
This is a moral crusade carried out under the auspices of a tech overhaul of government operations.
[1] https://archive.is/3vdPN