[mlazos]

Like sure I’m not familiar with the value of these programs, but you get that these programs are literal pennies compared to the government’s budget right? It’s not even worth talking about these. DOGE cuts aren’t going to add up to shit and you bet we’re going to hear “mission accomplished” in six months, meanwhile Russia and China and are going to grab global influence in the absence of USAID and we won’t experience the repercussions for years after these clowns have left office.

[rapatel0]

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?

[evenman]

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.

[refurb]

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.

[Dig1t]

lol these are my tax dollars! I’m sorry, I have nothing against gay people, but I do not want my tax dollars going to sex change operations in Guatemala.

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.

Did you know that most of FEMAs budget was spent housing migrants who crossed the border illegally instead of helping Americans affected by hurricanes?

The current situation is one where bureaucrats and NGOs enrich themselves off the back of taxpayers and the problems that actually need solving in our own country go completely unsolved.

We voted to cut all of this garbage, if they can’t spend it wisely then just pay down the national debt, which is at crisis levels BTW, or give it back to the taxpayers.

[Swenrekcah]

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

[1659447091]

> Whoever is against the aims of the deep state

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

[smadge]

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

[unclebucknasty]

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.

[maxerickson]

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.

[muglug]

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.

[tombert]

> 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.

[lesuorac]

> 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

[claudiulodro]

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.

[SpicyLemonZest]

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!

[NotMichaelBay]

> 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.

[unethical_ban]

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?

[knowitnone]

yes but they are my pennies

[onemoresoop]

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.