Republican Senator Rick Scott is absolutely in favor of fraud, giving how much he defrauded the US government in the 90s. Maybe we start punishing fraud by throwing his ass in jail?
Eliminating waste and fraud is a good thing. The problem is identifying what is and isn’t that.
Like, let’s say that USAID gives a few billion to prevent famine globally. Is that waste? To be sure, the people who receive that money aren’t American. But, on the other hand, they may be people who grow coffee beans, kola nut, various spices, etc. and much of the reason that they’re starving is because they’re growing cash crops that we import to the US, rather than produce for local consumption. 40 years down the line, that region that we’re aiding may use the money that they’re bringing in from the cash crops to industrialize, become a manufacturing powerhouse, and serve as a lead center of commerce, with strong positive connections to the US because of our history of mutual trade and aid.
There’s a lot of science and math that says that in the short term, you can benefit through assholery. But in the long run, you gain the most benefit by being a positive force, collecting allies, and encouraging wealth and stability for all.
If we can throw a few pennies worth of the budget around on fluff, and gain huge economic gains from it down the line, that’s not a loss. But it’s sort of like insurance, a lot of the time you spend money just to gain nothing from it, but every once in a while you get back what you put in several fold, and justify the expense. You have to look at the whole picture, over centuries, not at individual relationships, during the course of a few years or decades.
And in the present moment, we’re able to buy hundreds of billions of dollars worth of coffee, kola, etc. versus spending 10-50x that cost trying to limit our supply to developed, stable, arable nations, have more to enjoy, and only need to spend back 5% on top of what we bought, every few decades, to aid our producers through a rough spot.
In general, not a bad deal, and you can demonstrate that one without having to get all high-falutin.
For the record I don’t have time to respond to every post because I am working. Plus, I am not inclined to respond to posts that are just looking for an argument. I don’t expect to change many opinions and some people you can’t reasonably debate so why bother with it.
I understand this is mostly a left leaning board and I learned a long time ago that nearly all political boards are mostly left or right and rarely the twain shall meet. But one can try.
He is already trying to or has eliminated good and necessary programs, for example, USAID, which not only helped poor and needy people worldwide, but provided all kinds of soft diplomacy benefits for the US.
Paring back the IRS is not going to reduce waste and fraud, and neither will firing inspectors general.
ETA:
Maybe you should ask a moderator to move this to MPSIMS or something.
I never suggested you should respond to every post.
I said you were not responding to most posts. You still haven’t really answered.
Who would that be? You postef an OP. People responded in ways that were relevant and within the rules of P&E. Most of them are looking for reasoned debate- with cites, evidence and such- not an argument.
You have nearly all the posters responding to your OP expressing the same opinion. You have not responded to any of their arguments. How do you expect to change even one opinion?
Who would those people be? Reasonable debate is demanded by posters in GD and is generally sought for in this forum as well. If you at least attempted to engage in reasonable debate and other posters failed to do so, you could cite this thread as evidence that while you are behaving civilly and arguing in good faith, others are not. Has that already happened elsewhere on the SDMB? Do you have a link?
Of course I do. I have never heard anyone, whatever their political persuasion, advocating for waste and fraud. Have you?
IME, what many people - whatever their political leanings - describe as waste and fraud actually means programs they do not personally favor or benefit from. I’ll offer my personal opinion that military spending might be the largest single area in which economies could be achieved. Some folk may differ. I have not seen significant inspection/cuts of military spending proposed.
I’ll also offer my personal experience of 38 years with Social Security. There have always been considerable efforts to identify and eliminate fraud. IME, instances of what is legally defined as fraud are quite small. Fraud does not mean, “Joe Schmoe is getting disability benefits and I don’t think he deserves them.” Or, “I think these people should just get jobs.” That simply reflects your personal values.
If you believe any aspect of SSA system is “wasteful,” I suggest the appropriate process for addressing that would be to pass legislation or through rule-making. I could provide changes which reflect my perspective and values, but I have not heard anything to suggest the Administration is pursuing such an approach.
Final point - for the government to make fine case-by-case decisions and to monitor individual cases over time requires time and staffing - WHICH REQUIRES INCREASED FUNDING. The unfortunate result is that often, when a governmental entity is instructed to “be more efficient”, and staff is reduced, the most sensible response is to spend money more freely. Simple example - consider workfare. It is SO MUCH more expensive to monitor whether individuals are working than to simply cut checks.
I think you will get some disagreement with that. My personal opinion is that the actions we’ve seen so far do not seem to be tied to any identified waste or fraud. Can you identify the link WRT, say, the shutting down of USAID? The offering of deferred retirements? What is the waste and fraud you perceive? How was the prior administration failing to address it, and how are the current efforts directed to address it?
There is also the issue that many of his efforts seem to have questionable legal basis. I admit that I have a strong preference that government be predictable and consistent and follow established law and policy. If you wish to call such efforts “wasteful”, I would argue that the governmental goals differ from private industry’s, and that it is preferable that the government treat everyone fairly and dispassionately, while providing them the process that they are due.
I welcome this discussion/debate. But I’m not sure what your intended context/parameters are.
But a lot of people who receive that money are American. A chunk of that food relief is purchased from American farmers:
I think Musk has a personal vendetta against USAID because USAID provided a lot of support towards the overthrow of apartheid in South Africa, which had a direct negative effect on Musk’s family fortunes.
@BorealisCooper, can you clarify what you’re looking for in this thread?
Your title and OP seem to just ask whether eliminating government waste and fraud is a good thing, and everyone seems to agree it is.
But, your responses so far seem to hint that that’s what you think the Trump administration is doing, and how can people disagree with those actions. But, the current administration isn’t carefully eliminating waste and fraud, it’s randomly hacking away at current programs that President Musk or Jr. President Trump don’t like for one reason or another. There’s no evidence that they are in any way looking for actual waste and fraud after careful investigation. Rather, they are just striking out, seemingly at random.
So, which is it? Do you want to discuss whether government waste is a good thing, or whether the current administration is doing a good job of addressing that?
Take a step back. We’re $34 trillion in debt. You have to start SOMEWHERE.
If you’ve gone over your monthly budget, you really shouldn’t be spending money on bedazzled yoga pants.
What Trump and Musk are doing, especially in gutting the IRS, increases the deficit and debt rather than reducing it. Trump and Musk are both proven liars, and there’s no reason to believe that anything they’re trying to do is actually to benefit the US, and every reason to believe that what they’re doing is only to benefit themselves and their own interests.
If this isn’t about politics then there isn’t a thread on this board that is
Completely agreed. For example: they are planning to cut 50% of the staff of NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), and 30% of its budget.
Why? It’s undoubtedly not because of any significant levels of “waste and fraud” in NOAA. It’s apparently because Trump doesn’t like NOAA talking about climate change, and possibly because he wants to make weather forecasting more of a private-industry thing. But, bear in mind that all of the private weather companies – The Weather Channel, Accuweather, etc., rely on the National Weather Service (part of NOAA) for their data.
I don’t understand how the question of eliminating government waste is necessarily about politics.
Since you don’t want to address the elimination of USAID, let’s talk about the general buyout offers that the administration has offered most federal employees. My opinion is that it’s not a good way to eliminate waste. The people who would most readily accept the buyout may be the most employable elsewhere, or senior experienced folks with a lot of institutional knowledge. The people left behind may be the folks who are least employable elsewhere, or so junior that they have a very thin resume.
So, do you think that offering a general buyout, without regard to which employees are most valuable or work for the most valuable departments, was a good way to eliminate waste? Or, do you think it might lead to more inefficiency and waste, as the best and most knowledgeable employees find work elsewhere?
ETA: If you’d rather talk about some other government waste or fraud, maybe try to make the case for that, rather than talking in generalities. And, explain how the Trump administration is proposing to intelligently address that waste. Just because he established something called The Department of Government Efficiency doesn’t mean that the name is any more meaningful than the German Democratic Republic.
I think this belongs here, too:
Ever hear of the Free Concert at Altamont (1969)? The organizers decided to contract security to the Hell’s Angels motorcycle club for about $500 worth of beer.
Violence was the result. Scores were injured. At least one died. Property damage was ginormous. It was a disaster.
This is an example of the wrong solution to a legitimate problem.
Trump identified a few legitimate problems in the 2016 and 2024 campaigns, but he was the absolutely wrong man, with the absolutely wrong plan, to address those problems.
Whatever the question, Trump isn’t the answer.
Whatever the problem, Trump isn’t the solution.
Name the last Republican to reduce the deficit.
Nixon started with a surplus (3.2B) and Ford ended with a deficit (53B)
Carter increased that to (79B)
Reagan increased that to (153B)
Bush increased that to (255B)
Clinton reduced it and ended with a surplus (130B)
Bush 2 immediately gave it away and ended us at deficit (1,420B)
Obama reduced that to (670B)
Trump increased that to (2,770B)
Biden reduced that to (1,800B or so)
When you look at who increased our deficits and who reduced them, every Democrat in the last 60 years did better than every Republican.
The US government does a lot of outsourcing to private corporations, and a lot of the function of government agencies involves providing oversight to these civilian companies. Reducing this oversight increases waste and fraud perpetuated by civilian contractors, and if it’s reduced far enough, you are giving these corporation carte blanche to defraud the government for as much as they can.
A lot of the conservative agenda involves cutting funding to the IRS, and there is no way that reducing our country’s ability to collect revenue that is legally owed to them will help reduce waste and fraud - it will actually lead to large increases in tax evasion and other frauds. This does, however, directly benefit large corporations such as Tesla and SpaceX at the expense of the US taxpayer.
Oh, there are LOTS of questions “Trump” is the answer to. A few examples:
Who is the only US President convicted of a felony?
Who is the only US President twice impeached?
Who is the only US President convicted in a civil trial of sexually assaulting a woman?
Some ask for examples.
If the sources are correct , pertaining to USAid, I suppose most taxpayers would think these are examples of funds that should be eliminated
2 million for sex changes and LGBT activism in Guatemala
6 million to fund tourism in Egypt
Funding for New York Times, Politico, or most other supposedly non partisan news sources. Not including NPR or PBS here.
There are a lot of examples and I have no inclination to search for examples so that I can argue with some of you. As previously noted, I have work to do. Speaking of which, I work for myself and have no other staff but if I did have staff they would be advised when they were hired that spending personal time on the internet isn’t acceptable and won’t be tolerated. I trust that none of you are wasting company time.
When I have more time I will provide more examples of what I can consider govt waste of our tax money.
I agree with this
People constantly say things like this but a household budget is completely unlike that of the US government. Also, addressing the national debt and annual deficits can and should involve increases in revenues. This might mean increasing taxes on wealthier members of society. It might mean hiring more auditors at the IRS to root out underpayments.