The Constitutional crisis is upon us: the question will be "How do the courts decide what is legal/illegal?" and "Will Trump ignore the courts?". The latter is the most important question, for if he does so - and the GOP Congress doesn't hold him to account - then the Constitution has been removed as the underlying law of the land and the regime will have truly changed.
Who enforces the court orders? Who oversees the enforcement now that the IGs are fired? The balloon that will pop is our constitution and I have yet to see a Republican stand up for it. This is a terrible time for us.
No, it's about spending, AND power. Both parties have been extra-constitutional for a lot of years with respect to government spending. There are quite a few alphabet soup government agencies that should be done away with completely because they contribute to the bloat that exists in the budget. And speaking of the budget, one hasn't been adhered to in a long time, leading to all of the continuing resolutions that Congress passes that is supposed to constitute a budget. All of this irresponsibility needs to stop, and if it doesn't, it won't matter who wields the power, because, like the Weimar Republic in 1920s Germany, it will inevitably lead to something much worse.
The irresponsibility needs to stop but so does the lawlessness. Republicans who complained about Biden’s excesses are over the moon when Trump goes even further.
We have guardrails that Weimar Germany didn’t have, but we’re also undoing them at a rapid pace.
We have guardrails, but those require that the responsible parties in charge of them actually take action - e.g. Congress exerting their power rather than rolling-over.
The irresponsibility is cutting taxes while we have debt to pay off. If people really care about debt then they'll call for raising taxes and some spending adjustments - but you gotta get at the real spending, not the small change items like foreign aid or research grants.
Getting the grifters off the gravy train and restoring confidence is what most voters want. Wasting millions on line items that could make any average voter wealthy creates Trump voters.
I can't agree with everything you say but the link you provided is appreciated. There is a real need to reduce Social Security and federal health care spending and the rate of spending for those programs. Just keep in mind that those approaching retirement age need about twenty years to adjust their spending and savings. And any definition of wealthy has to be very well thought out. People live longer than they can be productive. After a few years of retirement, they might no longer have the option of going back to work.
I don't think there's as much grift as you may think, but that's where actual audits - which have been performed by IGs and recommendation from those audits are made by the GAO - are required to make any actual determination of what can reasonably be done by Congress and/or POTUS as applicable per law.
I think this quote is relevant: "I don’t think a lot of people appreciate how much of their overall lifestyle and relative certainty is backstopped by a steady, boring stability of systems they don’t understand or even realize exist." When it comes down to it, voters don't care to understand or know how the system works: they just want it to work. That ignorance is preyed-upon by bad actors (non-partisan term) that will say "Look how much was spent on [insert program/line item here]! This is outrageous!" because they know that it works. It's not specific to Trump: he's just utilizing an old strategy that has been followed by plenty of other dictators/dictator wannabes.
Frankly, a lot of the personnel and resource needs that you hate being so bloated are due to the costs needed to comply with accountability regulations. It takes time/effort/money to do that. What is needed there is to modernize systems to make compliance easier to manage - or of course to reduce said regulatory burdens, but that then makes for vulnerability to fraud. It's a trade-off, one that needs be understood.
I think there's also a case to be made that elected officials need to take a more hands-on role with oversight, which is somewhat hard to expand as needed because the House is restricted in membership. If we were to expand the House to limit the number of constituents per member, then we could ostensibly assign members to one role as opposed to multiple.
You're not gonna get any argument from me about the reality of aging: we're living longer, but that doesn't mean we are physically capable of working at a higher age. Any changes there are going to be difficult decisions: and regardless, taxes will need to go up in order to pay for our obligations and to reduce debt - if that's what people really claim to want.
I'll keep saying it: if you really want financial sanity, then you're going to end up cutting some spending and raising taxes - and ultimately setting tax levels to match spending, not the other way 'round.
Allocations without line-item approvals are like petty cash funds. So long as the guidelines for formal procurement are followed, anything goes. What is missing is judgment and accountability. Auditors can verify procedure compliance and proper authorizations but cannot hold anyone accountable for incompetency beyond procedural requirements. Who besides the chief executive can fire managers for what they deem inadequate judgment and supervision? Auditors cannot replace management integrity. Ruthless vetting and immediate corrective action are required when integrity is in question.
The only reason compliance auditing costs so much is the lack of competence and honesty plus the sheer amount of federal government involvement in our daily lives. Regarding overall lifestyle, I do not believe we need a nanny state - just a few commonsense laws.
It's the scope and size of the government and the amount of compliance that makes costs high: you'd expect similar amounts needed for compliance elsewhere too.
The point though is that you actually need to audit things, not just say "That looks bad/I don't like it". There needs to be proof of mismanagement or fraud, not just allegations - and the proof provides action-items that can be adopted or not.
Regarding what you may think is needed - that's ultimately up to Congress to right said laws either reducing or increasing the scope of the social safety net. That you advocate for a reduced one does not change that it is their responsibility to actually make said changes, not POTUS.
It also doesn't change that people don't want the spending that's actually an issue to be reduced: they don't call Social Security and Medicaid third-rails for nothing.
I believe that's what I said. It's the scope and size of government intrusion into our lives that makes audit costs so high. As a manager in a highly regulated Fortune 500 company, I've probably been subjected to more audits than you can imagine. It's what the managers do with audit results that count.
Regarding third rails, congress critters want to be reelected. They will never do the smart thing. Term limits now.
What really started the ball rolling on all this is the tax cuts Ronald Reagan got passed which weren't coupled with concurrent spending cuts recommended by the Grace Commission. The Democrats had control of Congress, and refused to implement any of those cuts, so a massive deficit was the result, and this problem has haunted us ever since, creating ever increasing debt over the past 40-plus years.
It's probably better to look at the budget surplus and fiscal outlook in the late-90s (no more debt by 2013!) and then what happened afterwards: GWB was elected and implemented tax cuts/increased spending/fiscal crisis, then another round of tax cuts in 2017 under Trump and increased spending even before a fiscal crisis occurred (and one did, of course [COVID]).
Spending isn't inherently a problem: it's matters what you spend it on. If you're making investments in your infrastructure and people and getting more money out in the long-term than you put in, then it does eventually work out (e.g. spending $1 and getting $7 of returns).
The Constitutional crisis is upon us: the question will be "How do the courts decide what is legal/illegal?" and "Will Trump ignore the courts?". The latter is the most important question, for if he does so - and the GOP Congress doesn't hold him to account - then the Constitution has been removed as the underlying law of the land and the regime will have truly changed.
Who enforces the court orders? Who oversees the enforcement now that the IGs are fired? The balloon that will pop is our constitution and I have yet to see a Republican stand up for it. This is a terrible time for us.
No, it's about spending, AND power. Both parties have been extra-constitutional for a lot of years with respect to government spending. There are quite a few alphabet soup government agencies that should be done away with completely because they contribute to the bloat that exists in the budget. And speaking of the budget, one hasn't been adhered to in a long time, leading to all of the continuing resolutions that Congress passes that is supposed to constitute a budget. All of this irresponsibility needs to stop, and if it doesn't, it won't matter who wields the power, because, like the Weimar Republic in 1920s Germany, it will inevitably lead to something much worse.
The irresponsibility needs to stop but so does the lawlessness. Republicans who complained about Biden’s excesses are over the moon when Trump goes even further.
We have guardrails that Weimar Germany didn’t have, but we’re also undoing them at a rapid pace.
We have guardrails, but those require that the responsible parties in charge of them actually take action - e.g. Congress exerting their power rather than rolling-over.
The irresponsibility is cutting taxes while we have debt to pay off. If people really care about debt then they'll call for raising taxes and some spending adjustments - but you gotta get at the real spending, not the small change items like foreign aid or research grants.
Something like this: https://manhattan.institute/article/a-comprehensive-federal-budget-plan-to-avert-a-debt-crisis-2024
And no it's not really about spending because cutting ~100B while adding another 8T to the debt doesn't save anything. That's just basic math.
Getting the grifters off the gravy train and restoring confidence is what most voters want. Wasting millions on line items that could make any average voter wealthy creates Trump voters.
I can't agree with everything you say but the link you provided is appreciated. There is a real need to reduce Social Security and federal health care spending and the rate of spending for those programs. Just keep in mind that those approaching retirement age need about twenty years to adjust their spending and savings. And any definition of wealthy has to be very well thought out. People live longer than they can be productive. After a few years of retirement, they might no longer have the option of going back to work.
I don't think there's as much grift as you may think, but that's where actual audits - which have been performed by IGs and recommendation from those audits are made by the GAO - are required to make any actual determination of what can reasonably be done by Congress and/or POTUS as applicable per law.
I think this quote is relevant: "I don’t think a lot of people appreciate how much of their overall lifestyle and relative certainty is backstopped by a steady, boring stability of systems they don’t understand or even realize exist." When it comes down to it, voters don't care to understand or know how the system works: they just want it to work. That ignorance is preyed-upon by bad actors (non-partisan term) that will say "Look how much was spent on [insert program/line item here]! This is outrageous!" because they know that it works. It's not specific to Trump: he's just utilizing an old strategy that has been followed by plenty of other dictators/dictator wannabes.
Frankly, a lot of the personnel and resource needs that you hate being so bloated are due to the costs needed to comply with accountability regulations. It takes time/effort/money to do that. What is needed there is to modernize systems to make compliance easier to manage - or of course to reduce said regulatory burdens, but that then makes for vulnerability to fraud. It's a trade-off, one that needs be understood.
I think there's also a case to be made that elected officials need to take a more hands-on role with oversight, which is somewhat hard to expand as needed because the House is restricted in membership. If we were to expand the House to limit the number of constituents per member, then we could ostensibly assign members to one role as opposed to multiple.
You're not gonna get any argument from me about the reality of aging: we're living longer, but that doesn't mean we are physically capable of working at a higher age. Any changes there are going to be difficult decisions: and regardless, taxes will need to go up in order to pay for our obligations and to reduce debt - if that's what people really claim to want.
I'll keep saying it: if you really want financial sanity, then you're going to end up cutting some spending and raising taxes - and ultimately setting tax levels to match spending, not the other way 'round.
Allocations without line-item approvals are like petty cash funds. So long as the guidelines for formal procurement are followed, anything goes. What is missing is judgment and accountability. Auditors can verify procedure compliance and proper authorizations but cannot hold anyone accountable for incompetency beyond procedural requirements. Who besides the chief executive can fire managers for what they deem inadequate judgment and supervision? Auditors cannot replace management integrity. Ruthless vetting and immediate corrective action are required when integrity is in question.
The only reason compliance auditing costs so much is the lack of competence and honesty plus the sheer amount of federal government involvement in our daily lives. Regarding overall lifestyle, I do not believe we need a nanny state - just a few commonsense laws.
It's the scope and size of the government and the amount of compliance that makes costs high: you'd expect similar amounts needed for compliance elsewhere too.
The point though is that you actually need to audit things, not just say "That looks bad/I don't like it". There needs to be proof of mismanagement or fraud, not just allegations - and the proof provides action-items that can be adopted or not.
Regarding what you may think is needed - that's ultimately up to Congress to right said laws either reducing or increasing the scope of the social safety net. That you advocate for a reduced one does not change that it is their responsibility to actually make said changes, not POTUS.
It also doesn't change that people don't want the spending that's actually an issue to be reduced: they don't call Social Security and Medicaid third-rails for nothing.
I believe that's what I said. It's the scope and size of government intrusion into our lives that makes audit costs so high. As a manager in a highly regulated Fortune 500 company, I've probably been subjected to more audits than you can imagine. It's what the managers do with audit results that count.
Regarding third rails, congress critters want to be reelected. They will never do the smart thing. Term limits now.
What really started the ball rolling on all this is the tax cuts Ronald Reagan got passed which weren't coupled with concurrent spending cuts recommended by the Grace Commission. The Democrats had control of Congress, and refused to implement any of those cuts, so a massive deficit was the result, and this problem has haunted us ever since, creating ever increasing debt over the past 40-plus years.
It's probably better to look at the budget surplus and fiscal outlook in the late-90s (no more debt by 2013!) and then what happened afterwards: GWB was elected and implemented tax cuts/increased spending/fiscal crisis, then another round of tax cuts in 2017 under Trump and increased spending even before a fiscal crisis occurred (and one did, of course [COVID]).
Spending isn't inherently a problem: it's matters what you spend it on. If you're making investments in your infrastructure and people and getting more money out in the long-term than you put in, then it does eventually work out (e.g. spending $1 and getting $7 of returns).