I don't really care if it was actual pennies being sent to LGBT Ugandans. Why in the world is a fraction of a cent of American tax dollars going to social activists in foreign countries?

To make the planet, the world, a better place for Americans.

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.

Theres nothing charitable or noble about donating other people’s money. If you feel these causes are worthy, donate your own money privately.

The 'other people' agree to it, via the democratic process. It's not stolen money.

Promoting US interests isn't "donating".

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 already do

All taxes are theft then?

We live in a polity. That polity can be generous, well-regarded, respected, feared, and despised. The admixture of those attitudes affects our polity’s ability to pursue its interests.

(I also happen to think that our polity should assist the least fortunate on its own merits, but you may not)

You're going to feel really weird when, in response to the US's waning engagement with global geopolitics, a bunch of countries form trade organizations and jettison their dollar holdings. Kinda like how a bunch of dairy and grain farmers felt when they realized the "welfare" programs they loved to bitch about were actually poorly camouflaged agricultural subsidies. Whoops.

>To make the planet, the world, a better place for Americans.

What does this mean?

It probably means transgender Americans can visit those countries without being crucified (figuratively or literally)?

It'd be nice if transgender Americans could live in America without being crucified (figuratively or literally).

Who cares? Work on your own country.

I think the point is rather that they don’t want to, and that you (or the previous administration anyway), did.

My job as a taxpayer is not to make the entire world a better place. It is to pay for common infrastructure like roads and schools and make our own country materially better.

I want exactly 0 of my dollars going to sex change operations in other countries.

Cool, I want $0 of my tax dollars going to fuck over Latin America when the people of a country there elect anybody slightly to the left of Genghis Khan.

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.

I’m sorry but that’s not a good use of taxpayer dollars.

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.

Sad!

Likewise

I lack tolerance because I think the government shouldn't support activist movements in foreign countries?

It’s pretty simple — better human rights in other countries means fewer refugees emigrating from those countries.

If your aim is to decrease the number of refugees coming here, USAID is a big lever you can pull.

Nah the value is in the outrage talking points: "MILLIONS OF YOUR MONEY WENT TO GAY PEOPLE SOMEWHERE ELSE"

the people who voted for this eat this up

Hard to take anyone seriously who rambles about anything other than corporate welfare and income inequality. Anything to distract from class. Now you're sitting there typing up diatribes about sex change operations in Guatemala.

> these are my tax dollars!

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.

> Some of them are other peoples tax dollars that do want this.

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.

I also pay into the the system, and I want to spend my tax dollars on all the things you don't want to. Moreover, I want to defund all the services which benefit you personally. Where does that leave us as a society?

I'd like my tax to pay for some oxygen for that other person, since they have clearly been deprived of it for a while.

It leaves us in the libertarian utopia which the commenter above you clearly desires to live in.

> 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.

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.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasteading

> lol these are my tax dollars!

No, those dollars have been extorted from you fair and square. You have no control over who gets the spoils.

True. But I can vote for someone who ensure my tax dollars are going where I want them to go.

fine. they should do it legally, not fascistically

> I have nothing against gay people,

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.

If the intention of USAID is to increase diplomacy by helping other countries, why wouldn’t USAID help with South Africa’s purported biggest problems [1]? $6.3 million for men who have sex with men in South Africa seems like an arbitrary way to help South Africa, or at least not as impactful as flood aid, reducing corruption or decreasing unemployment. It makes me wonder how USAID chooses to help countries and if it’s aligned with what the government (or their people) thinks the biggest problems in their country are.

[1] https://www.gov.za/issues/key-issues

South Africa has the most people infected with HIV by far. [1] It's a bit crazy to me that it's not listed in their key issues as more than 1 in 10 adults (maybe even 1 in 5) in South Africa have HIV.

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...

Practices such as Dry Sex increases a women chances exponentially.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/dry-sex-is-the-african-sexua...

You're providing a public service of sorts by demonstrating in real-time how certain people are so easily triggered, distracted and manipulated by minutiae. $6.3 million is nothing—not even a rounding error. But, throw "gay" in there and now it's the point.

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.

> We have people in CA affected by fires, people in Carolina who still need help rebuilding after flooding, people in Hawaii that need to rebuild after their own fires.

Trump wants to end all federal disaster relief.

And he literally dumped billions of gallons of water from their reservoirs[1] that they needed to fight future fires. To nobody’s benefit, mind you, and at a great expense.

[1](https://stocktonia.org/news/california-water/2025/02/01/trum...)

I don't know if there's any evidence that your tax dollars went to sex change operations in Guatemala.

$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...

Don’t waste your time researching facts for people like this. They will not even take the courtesy of responding, and cannot be bothered to consider an alternative angle to their ideology.

very correct and important advice (not being sarcastic)

This is just a long list of excuses.

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.

You can ctrl+f 'shelter' in the bill. It was not really FEMA's money, it was U.S. Customs and Border Protection money that was transferred to FEMA to disburse (probably for efficiency because FEMA already did similar work).

"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.

Money is fungible. All the hand waving about “it was really X agencies money” falls pretty flat when Americans go without.

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.

If Trump is our fiscal savior then why did he let Congress create that spending under his administration?

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...

[2] https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47681

This is a nice idea but the people doing the cutting are not looking to provide for the people. Part of what they’re cutting is Medicaid, for instance.

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.

> How hard is it to understand we shouldn’t be spending money on foreigners when Americans go without?

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?

America doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is in American interests to have a stable, prosperous, happy rest of the world to engage with.

This would make sense if they introduced any policy to actually help Americans lol. They are trying to cut benefits to Americans and foreigners. The current administration has literally talked about conditioning aid to California for the wildfires. What an absolute joke.

> How hard is it to understand we shouldn’t be spending money on foreigners when Americans go without?

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".

Strange that elsewhere you're asking people to provide "adult arguments", but as soon as people actually provide solid arguments you immediately devolve into rants and emotions.

> Just two days ago the DOGE committee stated that they discovered 2.7T of improper payments in Medicare and Medicaid to people overseas. 2.7T is a nontrivial amount of money.

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.

> I would love to hear justifications for things like this and how they help US global influence.

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.

[1]: https://www.tesla.com/autopilot

You can look them up on the actual government website:

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.

Why did you leave out the rest?

> 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?

Ignoring the fact you left off the rest of the description (as pointed out by another commenter) which also means that like $2 could go towards that purpose and $1,999,998 to something else (also $2M hasn't been spent; just $350,000 per your own link ...).

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...

“Advocate for improved quality and access to services”

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.

> The “services” here is gender affirming care. What does it mean to “advocate”? Why are my tax dollars being used for this?

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...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_barrel

Are you this stupid naturally or do you take some sort of Alex Jones supplement to help with it?

The "$47,000 transgender opera in Colombia" for example was a production of an award-winning opera that the US Embassy in Colombia sponsored. It's diplomacy.

Neutral party here: who wanted that? Award-winning doesn’t mean anything standing alone, unfortunately.

who wanted diplomacy?

Who wanted a trans themed opera

someone doing diplomacy. what’s the problem with supporting an opera?

Who is Mark Buffington, and why should I trust that his “recent web information” is an accurate and representative sample of spending that DOGE has cut? The official doge.gov site provides no breakdown other than a Twitter stream and an empty savings tab, although they claim on this lovely Valentine's day that "receipts" will be coming "no later than Valentine's day". Big if true!

Here's my take:

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?

> idk how we can have the mindset that this is all pointless, if you never make any effort to cut wasteful spending

So you've never heard of the Government Accountability Office, huh? This is literally its purpose.

USAID is literally a front for the CIA, funding the stuff that’s too risky for them.

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.

Yes, it does seems reasonable to destroy seven decades of US global influence buildup because there was a twitter clone made in 2010.

Among regimes toppled, prosecutors fired, presidents and vice presidents impeached, domestic and foreign elections interfered with, and literally a hundred other disgraces. Yes, it’s worth it.

Oh, you’re worried about corruption and election interference?

One day you’ll realise and don’t be too hard on yourself then. You were not the only one.

If you have a point to make, make it. Don’t just take vague jabs at me.

Justa hunch, but my guess is that GP is referring to the fact that the Trump administration and Project 2025 is the most blatant and detrimental manifestation of evil and corruption that the modern western world has seen since WW2, they outline their plans to completely destroy all semblance of justice and public protection from the wealthiest country in the world while ensuring that a free and fair democratic election never takes place again (in our lifetimes at least), and it’s somewhat poetic that people were duped by propaganda into giving them the power they needed to bring an end to the United States of America as it has existed since it was founded because they were tired of being taken advantage of by the system as it was.

It wasn’t perfect, but it’s going to look like a Utopia after these guys are done with us.

Those are big dramatic claims with nothing to back them up...

…besides the hundreds of other comments here, many with links to specific actions being taken by the government?

I’m more inclined to agree with you but just being ominous doesn’t add any value to the discussion.

You know who else doesn't like our proficiency in toppling regimes, foreign election interference and the hundred other "disgraces"? Our enemies and adversaries, who of course do the same.

Funny that your sentiments align so closely with theirs, and that you're cheering on our disempowerment as much as they are.

this is an absurd comment to read in 2025. "tacitly support running anti-democratic black ops around the world or you're supporting the enemy!" is some PATRIOT Act 2001 era shit.

What's absurd is the idea that the U.S. needs to stand down its clandestine operations, as if our foreign adversaries aren't doing the same and wouldn't just run roughshod over us.

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.

Is this deep state in the room with us now?

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.

> Whoever is against the aims of the deep state

The "deep state" is what is in full view with the Trump/Musk/Miller Administration.

In Trumpverse “hard power good, soft power bad.”

yes but they are my pennies

Ok, now not only your pennies but your thousands of dollars in taxes will have a lot less oversight and will be vaccumed up by the mega billionares through contracts with the government. Will those contracts benefit you? Thats a good question. You want to go to mars? Or live in a country where workers are freely discarded when sick, whose rights are about to erode completely? Im afraid nothing good will come out of this unless you’re one of the few benefitting directly. The rest of us are not in for a good time.

This is the false tool that bureaucrats use to justify there excesses. "this is just pennies...no one is going to notice it?

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?

Exactly.

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.

Your “government waste” is another’s crucial government program.

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.

No.

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.

Again, according to you. Give me a list of all the programs you find crucial, and I'll tell you all the ones I find wasteful. What a coincidence, my list of waste is exactly the same as your list of need. How will we ever coexist in a society, you and I?

> 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.

Nope.

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.

> I’m sure you won’t see the police, public health, state dept, as waste.

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.

> You only need to look at the list of things being cut.

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.

This has nothing to do with reducing the deficit. If it did, they would not be trying to cut IRS funding whose sole purpose is collecting revenue for the government. There are billions of dollars that the government is unable to collect due to insignificant resources. They are also still planning on their massive tax cuts which would further.

DOGE exists to cut programs that the current administration does not like. Thats it. Its entirely political.

In the age of AI (and way past the age of scanners and decent OCR) the IRS employs people to do manual data entry multiple times into a computer to enter forms into their databases. BSO systems from the SSA take 2 weeks to get a access to a service to file wages.

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.