Comment by ModernMech
8 days ago
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.
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> 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.