OMB freezes all disbursements / USAID shutdown / GOP begs for exceptions for their states

ZenMode said:
I posted about a dozen other wastes of taxpayer money. The percentage is irrelevant.

Waste is waste.
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First of all, you don't get to decide what is and isn't a "waste" of taxpayer money. And I'm confident you are not informed enough about this subject to make that determination.

Second of all, the percentage of "waste" is absolutely relevant when the remedy that Trump and Elon are proposing and implementing is the complete shutdown (and perhaps elimination) of the agency, and the freezing of all of its funding. if it were found that 0.1% of the money spent by USAID had been "wasted" by someone's determination, that would obviously be an incredibly small problem probably worthy of a couple of PowerPoint presentations about spending discipline, not an all-out public crusade against the organization and its mission (including Musk calling the organization criminal and accusing them not just of waste, but of fraud). You can't possibly be so dense to think that the examples you posted, even if true, are anything that should rise to the attention of a national media firestorm. Expecting some sort of mythical perfect efficiency out of government, where not a dollar is "wasted," is obviously completely unrealistic.

To paraphrase Jamie Raskin, if you really want to find wasting of taxpayer dollars, you can probably go over to DOD and find a half-dozen boondoggles that involve questionable expenditures that are orders of magnitude greater than the pittances you're talking about.
 
rodoheel said:
Perhaps you can elaborate on (1) what the problem would be if the description of those programs is true (even though it's highly likely that the description is not entirely true), and (2) what you mean by "hold people accountable" in this context?
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1. I don't feel like they are the best use of our foreign aid tax dollars compared to feeding starving people, offering medical care, etc. 2. Censure them or fire them or vote in different politicians.
 
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rodoheel said:
First of all, you don't get to decide what is and isn't a "waste" of taxpayer money. And I'm confident you are not informed enough about this subject to make that determination.

Second of all, the percentage of "waste" is absolutely relevant when the remedy that Trump and Elon are proposing and implementing is the complete shutdown (and perhaps elimination) of the agency, and the freezing of all of its funding. if it were found that 0.1% of the money spent by USAID had been "wasted" by someone's determination, that would obviously be an incredibly small problem probably worthy of a couple of PowerPoint presentations about spending discipline, not an all-out public crusade against the organization and its mission (including Musk calling the organization criminal and accusing them not just of waste, but of fraud). You can't possibly be so dense to think that the examples you posted, even if true, are anything that should rise to the attention of a national media firestorm. Expecting some sort of mythical perfect efficiency out of government, where not a dollar is "wasted," is obviously completely unrealistic.

To paraphrase Jamie Raskin, if you really want to find wasting of taxpayer dollars, you can probably go over to DOD and find a half-dozen boondoggles that involve questionable expenditures that are orders of magnitude greater than the pittances you're talking about.
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I'm all for finding waste everywhere. The problem is, the go-along-to-get-along Congress doesn't care about waste, nor have they, to any meaningful degree, for a long time.

So, if the president has the authority to not fund DEI programs in Serbia and LGBTQ comic books... great.

It may be small, but at least it's something and these ridiculous (yes, my opinion) pet projects are being exposed.
 
ZenMode said:
If any of the claims about USAID are true, it needs to be closely reviewed. For example, I don’t want to give another cent to Serbia to promote DEI….if that’s actually happening.

Here are only a few examples of the WASTE and ABUSE:

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mpaer said:
It will be hard to investigate now that orangeturd has eliminated all Inspector Generals
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I know. I thought that was a mistake. Trump could have reprioritized those folks and still gotten his headlines and we would have kept experienced investigators.

But I wonder if this would have been outside their purview. My understanding is that IG looks for fraud and waste, but not necessarily bureaucrats making questionable decisions on the use of tax-payer funds.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
I know. I thought that was a mistake. Trump could have reprioritized those folks and still gotten his headlines and we would have kept experienced investigators.

But I wonder if this would have been outside their purview. My understanding is that IG looks for fraud and waste, but not necessarily bureaucrats making questionable decisions on the use of tax-payer funds.
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This is going to surprise you, I'm sure, but it does not seem as though you understand what the Inspectors General do.

The reason we have civil service protections is so that government employees can do their jobs to the best of their abilities without this sort of second-guessing from ignorant fools. You have no idea why any of those programs were funded. You have no idea what they are set to accomplish, whether they were part of a package, whether they were subject to negotiations, whether they were requested by the recipient countries, or anything else. You want to judge an expense by its line item. What if the line item were "Wonderful wonderful things"

Whatever. Talking to you is like talking to a small child.
 
Paine said:
You’re making my point for me. The average person doesn’t know about the inner workings of the Department of Education. They don’t know what they do, but they will feel the effects of its elimination. The headlines and narrative for the average person will be: Trump eliminates Department of Education. At a time when the public education system is already struggling badly. Easy messaging for the Democrats, IMO.
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Incorrect. This is the narrative they are going to see:

www.foxnews.com

Trump preparing to majorly revamp Department of Education as math, reading scores show stunning lows

President Donald Trump is preparing to revamp the Department of Education after math, reading scores show stunning lows, Tiffany Justice told 'Fox & Friends' on Tuesday.
www.foxnews.com www.foxnews.com

www.foxnews.com

Department of Education doled out over $200M to universities to inject DEI into counseling courses: report

A report from Parents Defending Education alleges that since 2021, the Department of Education has awarded over $200 million to 53 universities for DEI programs.
www.foxnews.com www.foxnews.com

thefederalist.com

Trump's Ed Department Ends Biden's Title IX Social Experiment

The Ed Department announced it will end Biden's dangerous sexual and social Title IX experiments on America's school children.
thefederalist.com thefederalist.com
 
ZenMode said:
I'm all for finding waste everywhere. The problem is, the go-along-to-get-along Congress doesn't care about waste, nor have they, to any meaningful degree, for a long time.

So, if the president has the authority to not fund DEI programs in Serbia and LGBTQ comic books... great.

It may be small, but at least it's something and these ridiculous (yes, my opinion) pet projects are being exposed.
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Let me be clear, I have no problem if Trump wants to advocate and push Congress to change USAID's funding priorities to stop funding things that it calls "DEI" (even though their description of that is hilariously broad). The problem is in (1) the President taking power over funding that is not his to take, and (2) trying to demonize and destroy USAID in its entirety on the basis of spurious claims that it is a criminal organization that is engaged in fraud and criminal activity. When the only "evidence" is a small minority of small grants that were used for things the Trump administration is now crusading against.

As for Congress: the solution to that is for Congress to do more and/or do better. Not to have Trump continue to justify a dramatic expansion of executive power - including the power to impound money, which he absolutely does not have - on the basis of clearly spurious claims about USAID being some nefarious anti-American organization.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
1. I don't feel like they are the best use of our foreign aid tax dollars compared to feeding starving people, offering medical care, etc. 2. Censure them or fire them or vote in different politicians.
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Congress has to delegate some level of authority to make particular expenditures in service of congressional appropriations. Congress can't sit around all day deciding what brand of hammers to use on construction projects, what kind of coffee to put in the break room, and where every single grant dollar is going to go. The people to whom that authority is delegated shouldn't be second-guessed by any random American citizen who thinks some bucket of money should have been spent differently. Because you can't get 10 people to agree on how every dollar in the federal government is spent, much less the whole budget. That's why this sort of line-item exploration of every single grant dollar ever sent out is just such a spectacular waste of time - and such an obvious bad-faith exercise from Musk and the Trump admin, who have no desire to actually reduce fraud and waste but instead are looking for any pretext they can find to unconstitutionally arrogate to themselves the sole power to make decisions on expenditures.
 
rodoheel said:
Congress has to delegate some level of authority to make particular expenditures in service of congressional appropriations. Congress can't sit around all day deciding what brand of hammers to use on construction projects, what kind of coffee to put in the break room, and where every single grant dollar is going to go. The people to whom that authority is delegated shouldn't be second-guessed by any random American citizen who thinks some bucket of money should have been spent differently. Because you can't get 10 people to agree on how every dollar in the federal government is spent, much less the whole budget. That's why this sort of line-item exploration of every single grant dollar ever sent out is just such a spectacular waste of time - and such an obvious bad-faith exercise from Musk and the Trump admin, who have no desire to actually reduce fraud and waste but instead are looking for any pretext they can find to unconstitutionally arrogate to themselves the sole power to make decisions on expenditures.
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I agree that Congress can't get down to that level of minutia but I strongly disagree that civil servants can't be second-guessed as to how they spend money. They should absolutely be held accountable.

And I know the argument is that these millions of dollars don't mean a thing when you compare it to the trillions that we spend and I completely agree, but when you compare the millions of dollars to the salary of the person that is doing the investigating, that can be a pretty good investment.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
I agree that Congress can't get down to that level of minutia but I strongly disagree that civil servants can't be second-guessed as to how they spend money. They should absolutely be held accountable.

And I know the argument is that these millions of dollars don't mean a thing when you compare it to the trillions that we spend and I completely agree, but when you compare the millions of dollars to the salary of the person that is doing the investigating, that can be a pretty good investment.
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Held accountable by established audit processes? Absolutely. Held accountable for fraud and contracting processes that violate federal law? Absolutely. Held accountable simply because someone has a philosophical or political disagreement about what money should be spent on? That's where I have a problem.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
I agree that Congress can't get down to that level of minutia but I strongly disagree that civil servants can't be second-guessed as to how they spend money. They should absolutely be held accountable.

And I know the argument is that these millions of dollars don't mean a thing when you compare it to the trillions that we spend and I completely agree, but when you compare the millions of dollars to the salary of the person that is doing the investigating, that can be a pretty good investment.
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Do you think Musk will save more per hour from these cuts, or make more during that time?
 
rodoheel said:
Held accountable by established audit processes? Absolutely. Held accountable for fraud and contracting processes that violate federal law? Absolutely. Held accountable simply because someone has a philosophical or political disagreement about what money should be spent on? That's where I have a problem.
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I hear your opinion and I respect it, but I have no problem holding someone accountable for pushing a political agenda with tax dollar funds meant for foreign aid. I'd much rather see that money spent on helping the less fortunate or put back towards the debt. Agree to disagree I suppose.
 
sringwal said:
Do you think Musk will save more per hour from these cuts, or make more during that time?
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I don't know and find it irrelevant. Now if you're implying that musk is going to fraudulently pay himself from tax dollars, I'd be very happy to prosecute him even if he wiped out the deficit, wiped out the debt and gave everyone a $100,000 a year stipend because he saved us so much money.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
I hear your opinion and I respect it, but I have no problem holding someone accountable for pushing a political agenda with tax dollar funds meant for foreign aid. I'd much rather see that money spent on helping the less fortunate or put back towards the debt. Agree to disagree I suppose.
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OK. Imagine Congress appropriates $10 million in money to be used to "promote democracy in southeast Asia." Lots of people are going to have different opinions about what it means to "promote Democracy." A person working for USAID awards a grant of $100k for something they believe in good faith to be consistent with that goal. That belief is in line with the presidential administration at the time. Then a new administration comes in. They think "promote Democracy" means something different. And you think it's appropriate for the USAID employee who approved the grant disbursement to now be fired and called a criminal engaging in fraud just because of that difference in understanding of a fairly vague Congressional appropriation?
 
gtyellowjacket said:
I don't know and find it irrelevant. Now if you're implying that musk is going to fraudulently pay himself from tax dollars, I'd be very happy to prosecute him even if he wiped out the deficit, wiped out the debt and gave everyone a $100,000 a year stipend because he saved us so much money.
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Yes. That is what I believe he is doing. The money “saved” from all of these cuts will go directly into the US Sovereign Wealth Fund which will have a large crypto component that will, either directly or indirectly, lead to Musk profiting off of what is happening at the moment.
 
rodoheel said:
OK. Imagine Congress appropriates $10 million in money to be used to "promote democracy in southeast Asia." Lots of people are going to have different opinions about what it means to "promote Democracy." A person working for USAID awards a grant of $100k for something they believe in good faith to be consistent with that goal. That belief is in line with the presidential administration at the time. Then a new administration comes in. They think "promote Democracy" means something different. And you think it's appropriate for the USAID employee who approved the grant disbursement to now be fired and called a criminal engaging in fraud just because of that difference in understanding of a fairly vague Congressional appropriation?
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I would say if that person had the opportunity to spend that $100,000 on voting machines or polling places, but thought it was a better idea to spend it on a DEI Opera or a transgender comic book, I would question that person's judgment and competence in their job. I wouldn't say that was criminal but I would say that it would require some adverse job actions including possibly firing them.
 
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