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DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

nytimes.com

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Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#711

Post by sxyuan »

ctrlp wrote: post #698
sxyuan wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think a better question is whether having a federal workforce of 4 million people managed by an unaccountable bureaucracy is in the best interests of any country. The word "unaccountable" gets thrown around a lot in these discussions. The leaders of these bureaucracies are ultimately appointed by and accountable to the President, who is in turn elected by and accountable to the public. In what sense are they unac…

It only will make sense when you reintroduce the idea of "the political" into your framework. Without that, a government is simply a territorial administrative apparatus or provincial satrapy. If your parents are Canadian, perhaps you are as well (or at least very familiar with Canada), and can relate to a government seeing its population as simply interchangeable units of administrative responsibility managed by a h…

It sounds like you have a fair bit of pride in the US, and a fair number of grievances as well. Goodness knows there's plenty of grievances to go around, and I can hardly fault you for having pride in your country and desiring to see better days for it.

So, I suppose I'll just hope (against hope) that you're right in your optimism about these changes.

I'm a Canadian expat who's lived in the US for many years, partly for work and partly because of the relationships built up over these years. I can only laugh a little and shake my head at your notion that Canada is authoritarian. I suppose it all depends on how you define freedom, and whose freedom ultimately matters.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#712

Post by guax »

Sysreq2 wrote: post #230
munchler wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We spend too much" is a political opinion, rather than a statement of fact. Only Congress can change the amount of money spent by the government, so the executive branch's actions are unconstitutional, no matter how large the crowd cheering it on. This is exactly the sort of mob rule that the Founders wanted to prevent.

I keep harping on this - but two points: 1) Our debt is above GDP and interest is rising faster than GDP growth. Debt is fine when being used as leverage but we are upside down at the moment. 2) We don’t have the ability to issue more debt at the moment. The government has no money. They are using employee pension funds to meet obligations with a promissory note. We have negative cash flow and have run out of the abi…

I went to search, the us gov has a nice website about the dev. Til.

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/natio...

The debt graph caught my eye. I did not expect it to be that stable for so long. I wonder what happened in 1981, impossible to say.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#713

Post by nielsbot »

sxyuan wrote: post #248

For those who want to have a substantive discussion on the federal budget and believe these cuts are justified, I have a few questions (putting aside questions of constitutionality for this thread): 1. There are claims that federal spending is out of control. How do you square that with the fact that spending as a percentage of GDP is only slightly elevated compared to the historical average going back to at least th…

Seems like all the savings we need could be gained by a 50% (or more) cut to "defense" spending.

Doesn't that align with US conservative principles? Instead of trying to be the world police (in actuality suppress our "enemies'" access to dwindling oil and minerals) we could focus our efforts domestically?

I'm all for it: more education, healthcare, arts, housing, green economomy, less BS libertarianism (loot the treasury and "break out the bootstraps, you poors")

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#714

Post by thih9 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #693
insane_dreamer wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proposed Senate budget includes $150 billion increase in the defense budget, which already was 50% of all discretionary spending (that means after SS and Medicare as that is covered by a separate tax). This is much more than any DOGE savings, and shows that this isn't about reducing the federal budget, but about cutting services in order to fund two things: military, and corporate tax cuts (which largely benefit…

> This is much more than any DOGE savings DOGE is an 18 month project. Confidently asserting the end result after a few weeks is bold.

A bit off topic: end result and how to measure it is often the point against DOGE - that their “move fast and break things” approach would in fact break things, causing unexpected and excessive long term costs.

I get your point, they are still active and there will be more to evaluate.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#715

Post by fastball »

jmward01 wrote: post #203

People aren't voting for what benefits them which means we are now in post policy politics. That means that what matters is the messaging and not the actual things done or the impact of those things on people. This leads to doing things that you have the ability to message the way you want and not doing things that help people. The MAGA crowd figured this out and figured out that angry yelling is the easiest message…

> People aren't voting for what benefits them

Is this actually desirable? I want informed people who vote for what they think is best for the country.

I'd prefer it if everyone else abstained.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#716

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Sysreq2 wrote: post #230
munchler wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We spend too much" is a political opinion, rather than a statement of fact. Only Congress can change the amount of money spent by the government, so the executive branch's actions are unconstitutional, no matter how large the crowd cheering it on. This is exactly the sort of mob rule that the Founders wanted to prevent.

I keep harping on this - but two points: 1) Our debt is above GDP and interest is rising faster than GDP growth. Debt is fine when being used as leverage but we are upside down at the moment. 2) We don’t have the ability to issue more debt at the moment. The government has no money. They are using employee pension funds to meet obligations with a promissory note. We have negative cash flow and have run out of the abi…

> We don’t have the ability to issue more debt at the moment

One, DOGE isn't doing anything to cut spending. Every dollar Musk "cuts" that doesn't get Congressional authorisation is just being borrowed from future litigation plus all the time and expense that will eat up.

Two, if DOGE can supercede the Congress than so can the Treasury in issuing new debt. Trump has said he wants to kill the debt limit. He could just try that with an executive order. DOGE is already shredding contracts and blocking lawful payments--we're already jeopardising the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. (Ironically, in a manner similar to how South Africa trashed itself in modern history.)

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#717

Post by bambax »

sxyuan wrote: post #248

For those who want to have a substantive discussion on the federal budget and believe these cuts are justified, I have a few questions (putting aside questions of constitutionality for this thread): 1. There are claims that federal spending is out of control. How do you square that with the fact that spending as a percentage of GDP is only slightly elevated compared to the historical average going back to at least th…

These questions are about common sense, but the election of Trump has proven once again (if it needed proof) that politics don't have anything to do with common sense.

Politics is about sticking it to the other side, even if it means hurting oneself in the process.

I'm not sure anymore the famous Churchill quote about democracy[0] is true. Elections inevitably produce populism, and populism often lead to catastrophe. But we haven't tried "all the other" forms of government, and some could be tried again. Sortition being a prime candidate:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

[0] “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#719

Post by alabastervlog »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #687
ipython wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And don't worry, the House is ready to extend and expand tax cuts to more than extinguish any potential "savings" - to the tune of over $3 trillion in extra deficit spending. But don't worry, they've planned for that- just increase the debt limit by $4 trillion to cover the difference! After all, now that the Democrats aren't in charge any longer, increasing the debt limit is no biggie - we'll just grow ourselves out…

Wait, I thought the GOP was the party of fiscal conservatism and reducing the deficit? Shouldn't they be reducing the debt ceiling rather than raising it?

They’re the party of saying that, but then cutting taxes and launching insanely expensive very-optional wars paid for by credit card. This is just what they in-fact do when given a chance.

They claim to want to reduce the deficit, but are also committed to pretending that the best and least-painful ways to do that just don’t exist. So. Kinda hard to actually do it.

They only care about deficits when a democrat wants to pay for sick children’s medicine or something.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#720

Post by tdeck »

stouset wrote: post #692
cwalv wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you square that with the fact that spending as a percentage of GDP is only slightly elevated compared to the historical average...? Why should it scale linearly with GDP? I can see an argument that it should scale linearly with population (maybe), but if GDP per capita increases, you could also expect better tech/productivity to allow gov spending per capita to decrease. > What do you think should be cut, an…

> But if the question is 'do you think an effort should be made to look for things to cut', I'd say 'yes, of course.' This is such an unbelievably lazy response. Every single person in existence thinks there’s some amount of government waste that we wish were cut and either returned to the citizens or put to better use elsewhere. The interesting and important question which GP poijted out—and which you completely dod…

> It’s about fulfilling their long-stated wet dream of finally drowning the government in a bathtub.

Except for the parts for the government that can shoot you or kick down your door. Those parts are sticking around for sure.

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