For everything that isn't social security, medicare, or the military, continued federal support requires explicitly convincing enough members of Congress that i

For everything that isn't social security, medicare, or the military, continued federal support requires explicitly convincing enough members of Congress that it is important so that they will campaign in their committees for even basic inflation-level funding increases to be included in the next budget. National Park Service has a backlog of billions of dollars in maintenance it knows it needs to do across the US, but Congress won't give them the money to do it. They'll toss $18 billion to Israel though even while Israeli politicians and the Israeli public and Israeli lobbying groups in the US criticizes the US for not being generous or supportive enough and gets involved in domestic US politics. We need a serious talk about the strings our very generous foreign aid needs to come attached to.