There are always reasons to spend more and more money that we don’t have.
We are paying $1T on interest payments on $36T debt.
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There is no law against raising taxes. Bill Clinton had the deficit under control. Then Bush cut taxes and the deficit exploded. Raise taxes back to where they were under Clinton.
Seems pretty simple.
Clinton signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 into law on August 10, 1993. The law created a 36 percent to 39.6 percent income tax for high-income individuals in the top 1.2% of wage earners. Businesses were given an income tax rate of 35%. Economic policy of the Bill Clinton administration - Wikipedia.
After this tax hike in 1993, the deficit declined each year until 1998 when it became a surplus. It stayed a surplus until Bush lowered taxes in 2001 and again in 2003. That whooshing sound you heard was the deficit exploding after the last tax cut.
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Americans voted to reduce spending and not raise taxes.
Many will throw tantrums. Big delete is underway.
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Really? It looks like you really do not understand what a Tariff really is. Typical.
Oh yeah especially all the uber right that think Food stamps are a “right”
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Kamala is not the President.
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It must make you feel warm and fuzzy thinking the Chinese are your friends and your fellow Americans are the enemies. Well done Komrade.
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2019 federal spend: $4.5T
2024 federal spent: $7T
Delete. Delete. Delete.
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2021 federal spend $7.77 million. The year Trump left office. Thank you Biden. LOL
I have to say it looks like Dividend is having a terrible time.
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Getting back to the US AID, last month PBS had an eight-minute segment on the agency and where the money goes. Local partners get only about 10% of the money.
In addition, “Almost half of awards did not achieve expected results, but implementers were generally paid full award amounts.”
DB2
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From 2014:
USAID used HIV program in Cuba to foment rebellion
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/04/report-u-s-aid-used-hiv-program-in-cuba-to-foment-rebellion/
The Associated Press is reporting that an Obama administration program secretly dispatched young Latin Americans to Cuba using the cover of health and civic programs to provoke political change, a clandestine operation that put those foreigners in danger even after a U.S. contractor was hauled away to a Cuban jail.
DB2
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One has to wonder who the giverment works for…
The Captain
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“People have silly ideas of the size of impact one would get from cancelling all aid”
Or, just maybe, this admin is prepping Americans to get ready for all sorts of " stop payments". SS comes to mind.
The President, and Trump, have said to prepare for some pain.
2 guys who have very likely never worked up a sweat, who very likely have never developed a callous on their hands from manual labor, are telling Americans to prepare for some pain. I’m sure it will be shared sacrifice, though. Leadership starts at the top. Everybody please point out when they see any signs of this shared sacrifice, I haven’t been able to find any yet.
I think I hear the very faint sound of pitchforks being sharpened, nah can’t be, Americans luv Prez Musk
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Keeping in mind the base is crusty old white folks, “they” will probably claim probable cause and stop payments to people with names like Jose and Muhammad…because there would be no “probable cause” to suspect white people of defrauding SS and Medicare, right?
Steve
Some people call it “checks and balances”. But I can see your point. Maybe instead of a line item veto, we institute a line item approval … Congress has to approve each line item one by one and all in a transparent manner so we can see how they are spending our money. No more BS of continuing resolutions, no more omnibus bills, none of that cr@p anymore. Wanna spend money? Put exactly what you want to spend it on in a bill, debate the bill publicly, and then approve or disapprove the bill. End of story. In other words, do your job. This is addressed to all parties in government, everywhere.
Absolutely true. That’s why ALL expenditures need to be examined under the bright light of day.
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Sure, I’ll defend USAID. First, let me say that no organization is perfect. The bigger the organization and the longer it has been around, the easier it is to find failures and questionable activities. Even Musk’s Tesla wouldn’t be able to handle the scrutiny applied to government agencies. I tried defending the billions spent on the Boring company on this board. Wasn’t easy.
What one needs to look at is cost/benefit, has USAID accomplished more than the cost of the program? I think it has by a long shot so eliminating it would be a case of sacrificing long term benefits for short term savings.
If DrBob had actually listened to the posted link he might have recognized that the major reason USAID is not optimally efficient in its spending is because of strict guidelines written by Congress.
USAID contracts/grants have to be given out to known entities with a track record of compliance to regulations. This means that local partners rarely qualify. In addition, USAID staff has been reduced since the Clinton administration even while its responsibilities and workload has increased. This means more and more USAID activities get outsourced to private companies who are more concerned with profits over mission.
So yes, USAID has become inefficient because of misguided efforts to cut spending on everything except Defense. But it still gives Americans more benefit for each dollar spent than most farm subsidies and fossil fuel tax breaks.
USAID tried to develop a messaging system that Cubans could use but that the Cuban government could not track. This was part of a program initiated by the Clinton administration to foster a peaceful transition to democracy.
USAID’s Cuba Program supports the U.S. foreign policy goal of promoting a peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba by encouraging the development of Cuban civil society. Its strategy is to “increase the free flow of accurate information on democracy, human rights, and free enterprise development to, from and within Cuba.” Profile of the USAID Cuba Program
We can argue whether it was a good idea or not. But the mission of USAID was transparent and popular at the time.
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That I would agree with. As long as the Congress is doing it. Let’s see the negotiations and where the money is being spent. Should one state get more money than another? This would stop some states from living off the rest of the country.
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Ayup. The narrative is the only thing school does is “woke indoctrination”, so defund it. Put the kids out in the job market, so they learn “the dignity of work” instead.
The company that does canned, on line, course material (no Commie teachers needed), has been going bonkers since the election.
Steve
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The education industry brought it on themselves by shifting from learning to indoctrination. Read, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy by Thomas Sowell
The Captain
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I don’t have a problem with USAID or CIA work (if they were). It is the 10% getting to the intended recipients. There is no way I would donate to a charity that had a low performance rating. If that is because of the way it is set up, then support a regime change.
DB2
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