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Vivek Ramaswamy on X: "Will entire agencies be deleted? Answer: yes

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Re: Vivek Ramaswamy on X: "Will entire agencies be deleted? Answer: yes

#111

Post by krapp »

steveoscaro wrote: post #7
mattgibson wrote: post #5

This looks horribly like failing to understand Chesterton's fence https://thoughtbot.com/blog/chestertons-fence The agencies were democratically put in place for a reason. Removing them with no public discussion of the original reasoning is deeply undemocratic. At the very least, someone thought that the cost of having them in place was less than the cost to society of not having them there. Has that changed?

Didn't a democracy vote in the people that are saying they want to remove some agencies? Isn't that also how the agencies came to be in the first place?

Yes, a democracy voted for authoritarianism. That is one of the risks of a democratic system.

Re: Vivek Ramaswamy on X: "Will entire agencies be deleted? Answer: yes

#112

Post by krapp »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #16

I hope the voters learn from this, but I'm ready to be disappointed again

Winston Churchill supposedly said "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." I'm starting to think he was too optimistic.

Re: Vivek Ramaswamy on X: "Will entire agencies be deleted? Answer: yes

#113

Post by tzs »

letmevoteplease wrote: post #102
some_random wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention but deleting agencies was not something I saw discussed at all prior to the election.

The Republican Party Platform says: "We are going to close the Department of Education in Washington, D.C. and send it back to the States, where it belongs, and let the States run our educational system as it should be run." https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/2024-republican-pa... Trump also mentioned it frequently in his speeches: " 'I say it all the time, I’m dying to get back to do this. We will ultimately…

That platform has some puzzling things in it, like saying that if they win the White House and majorities in Congress they will quickly "Fight for and protect Social Security and Medicare with no cuts, including no changes to the retirement age".

That's puzzling because every time in the past few years that anyone in Congress has tried to take up addressing the projected insolvency of the Social Security trust fund in ~2033 Republicans have rejected any approach other than raising the retirement age.

Re: Vivek Ramaswamy on X: "Will entire agencies be deleted? Answer: yes

#114

Post by sundaeofshock »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #100
sundaeofshock wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And most of the members of congress (all of the house, 1/3 of the senate)will be up for election in 2 years. Let’s see if they are up for cutting social security and medicare when they have to face the voters just two years later.

two years is long enough to make deep cuts. there will be no big collapse, no big catastrophe. there won't be a 1991 Berlin Wall event. things will just get shittier and more expensive, and people will go out less, buy less, travel less, have fewer kids, etc.

Let’s break this down. Payments on the debt (10% of budget) are already off the table. SS, Health Insurance (Medicare, Medicaid, ACA, etc) and defense represent about 58% of the budget. If we eliminate everything else, we are going after things like welfare, the VA, and veterans benefits, as well as subsidies to a variety of businesses. Bottom line, even if there wasn’t an economic impact, there will be some very pissed-off powerful constituents.

At the end of the day, this whole process shows that Musk and Ramaswamy are clowns.

Re: Vivek Ramaswamy on X: "Will entire agencies be deleted? Answer: yes

#116

Post by cherry_tree »

steveoscaro wrote: post #7
mattgibson wrote: post #5

This looks horribly like failing to understand Chesterton's fence https://thoughtbot.com/blog/chestertons-fence The agencies were democratically put in place for a reason. Removing them with no public discussion of the original reasoning is deeply undemocratic. At the very least, someone thought that the cost of having them in place was less than the cost to society of not having them there. Has that changed?

Didn't a democracy vote in the people that are saying they want to remove some agencies? Isn't that also how the agencies came to be in the first place?

Assuming you’re genuinely asking, this is a tweet from Vivek Ramaswamy who was not on any ballot this election, but was since appointed to a position that the elected candidate Donald Trump created as part of a net new agency he plans to create during his presidency.

“Deleting entire agencies” was not part of Donald trumps campaign afaict, his platform page is still live: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform

Re: Vivek Ramaswamy on X: "Will entire agencies be deleted? Answer: yes

#117

Post by kamaal »

mattgibson wrote: post #5

This looks horribly like failing to understand Chesterton's fence https://thoughtbot.com/blog/chestertons-fence The agencies were democratically put in place for a reason. Removing them with no public discussion of the original reasoning is deeply undemocratic. At the very least, someone thought that the cost of having them in place was less than the cost to society of not having them there. Has that changed?

>>The agencies were democratically put in place for a reason.

>>Has that changed?

'that' 'reason' for any government is to ensure its own survival till eternity. Though eternity might not be possible. Its really more on the lines that governments exist to ensure their own survival, and the survival of their interests. Its often a misunderstanding that Government work for the people, they just work for themselves. To that extent, unless the government is going down due to this very reason, Im guessing it doesn't make any sense to chop departments whole sale this way.

Another factor is budgets just don't work the way these people imagine, its not that budgets would reduce or that they would return some money back to the treasury. These sort of actions just mean that budgeting just goes on as is, the money that now is saved will be used up by the other departments. Im guessing the armed forces.

Re: Vivek Ramaswamy on X: "Will entire agencies be deleted? Answer: yes

#118

Post by bitshiftfaced »

gwurk wrote: post #11
steveoscaro wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't a democracy vote in the people that are saying they want to remove some agencies? Isn't that also how the agencies came to be in the first place?

You are right, but america use a two party system, there were only two options, and those options differed in many ways, it is difficult to say if "removing some agencies" was what the people that voted wanted, or if they just preferred that candidate despite them wanting to remove some agencies.

You can apply this same argument to when the agencies were created in the first place.

Re: Vivek Ramaswamy on X: "Will entire agencies be deleted? Answer: yes

#119

Post by NautilusWave »

The executive branch only spends the money approved by congress. It only runs the agencies created by Congress. The executive branch can't shrink, can't spend less money, without Congressional approval. With the vanishingly small majority Republicans will have in Congress, this sounds like a pipe dream.
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