3 ms·

Simply audit defense spending. It's the vast majority of government spending and hasn't been auditable in ages.

cuuupid 2y ago
Defense spending gets audited frequently, the audits just end in failure. This is primarily due to massive lines in their budget that are totally classified, but also they do lose track of resources. Until recently they did not even know how many warfighters they had! That being said, at the very least basically everything they do moves towards some outcome. Most folks in the military are incredibly mission-driven. Plus, all their big contracts (50M$+) get regular hearings from Congress. The same cannot be said for civil at all, they have little to no oversight, everyone is buddy-buddy so internal audits often border on fraud, there are many billion dollar contracts that have never gone thru Congressional approval. If you want to really lose your shit, you should look up how OTA contract vehicles function. Literally just "trust me bro" spending, and for some reason rampant in civil.
- whoitwas 2y ago
  Defense isn't auditable and they spend the most by far. I'm not concerned with government spending. The only reason we have a deficit is because GOP keeps cutting taxes for millionaires.
  - cuuupid 2y ago
    Defense is not only auditable but is regularly audited; publicly by GAO and CBO, and internally by their OIG: https://www.dodig.mil https://www.dodig.mil > they spend the most by far This is not true and for some reason a common myth that is easily disproven; defense spending is only 13% of the budget, the 54% number people keep throwing around is discretionary spending and not relevant as we should be looking at the entire budget. DOGE is literally just sorting by percent of budget; Medicaid is 22%, SSA is 20%, interest on our deficit by itself is 11% and on track to exceed our entire defense budget. > The only reason we have a deficit is because GOP keeps cutting taxes for millionaires. I mean, the math does not check out at all. We can expect losses of revenue from cuts to be around the same as receipts from audits done by the IRS; we know this number to be only around ~50B$ a year. You are being gaslit into thinking the problem is your fellow citizens not paying more in taxes, when anyone going into government can tell you they are reckless with spending. Just to put things in perspective, Medicaid is hardly an actual healthcare program as it applies to less than 20% of our population. However it somehow(?) costs more than 4x as much as the entire NHS.
    - rl3 2y ago
      >Just to put things in perspective, Medicaid is hardly an actual healthcare program as it applies to less than 20% of our population. That's still a cool 70 million people. >However it somehow(?) costs more than 4x as much as the entire NHS. Sounds like a good argument for [properly-administered] single-payer, universal healthcare.
      - cuuupid 2y ago
        > That's still a cool 70 million people. Yes, hence why I'm comparing it to the NHS supporting the UK (~70M pop). Also note the NHS's coverage far exceeds Medicaid. > Sounds like a good argument for [properly-administered] single-payer, universal healthcare. The opposite right now! The US government is SO bad at managing healthcare, that they are somehow making the NHS look great. We need to get our bureaucracy and spending under control. Then definitely yes, government funded healthcare, we can have a system closer to Australia in efficacy. This is a tangent to this thread but I think in practice we will probably end up with something closer to the Swiss hybrid system.
        rl3 2y ago
        Australia or Switzerland? Can't argue with that. I wish I was optimistic as you. Only problem is, I highly doubt any savings realized from spending cuts will materialize in the form of better healthcare. Regulatory capture is rampant, and then there's that whole pesky issue of growing unchecked authoritarianism that has a good chance of not aligning with the will of the people.
        cuuupid 2y ago
        Yeah I can understand the sentiment. I’m being optimistic primarily because the alternative is to accept that our economy is going to eventually go bust and turn us into a debtor society to foreign economies. The building is on fire, closing your eyes or clinging to a bottle of water are both valid reactions!
        EgoIncarnate 2y ago
insane_dreamer 2y ago
The problem with the military spending is on Congress, because they set the defense budget, not the White House (and certainly not DOGE). But defense doesn't get cut because it props up a huge infrastructure across many states. No senator wants to be the ones to vote to cut that in their state. The US economy is built, to some degree, on the military-industry complex, especially since we offshored all the other manufacturing.

Defense spending gets audited frequently, the audits just end in failure. This is primarily due to massive lines in their budget that are totally classified, but also they do lose track of resources. Until recently they did not even know how many warfighters they had! That being said, at the very least basically everything they do moves towards some outcome. Most folks in the military are incredibly mission-driven. Plus, all their big contracts (50M$+) get regular hearings from Congress. The same cannot be said for civil at all, they have little to no oversight, everyone is buddy-buddy so internal audits often border on fraud, there are many billion dollar contracts that have never gone thru Congressional approval. If you want to really lose your shit, you should look up how OTA contract vehicles function. Literally just "trust me bro" spending, and for some reason rampant in civil.

whoitwas 2y ago
Defense isn't auditable and they spend the most by far. I'm not concerned with government spending. The only reason we have a deficit is because GOP keeps cutting taxes for millionaires.
- cuuupid 2y ago
  Defense is not only auditable but is regularly audited; publicly by GAO and CBO, and internally by their OIG: https://www.dodig.mil https://www.dodig.mil > they spend the most by far This is not true and for some reason a common myth that is easily disproven; defense spending is only 13% of the budget, the 54% number people keep throwing around is discretionary spending and not relevant as we should be looking at the entire budget. DOGE is literally just sorting by percent of budget; Medicaid is 22%, SSA is 20%, interest on our deficit by itself is 11% and on track to exceed our entire defense budget. > The only reason we have a deficit is because GOP keeps cutting taxes for millionaires. I mean, the math does not check out at all. We can expect losses of revenue from cuts to be around the same as receipts from audits done by the IRS; we know this number to be only around ~50B$ a year. You are being gaslit into thinking the problem is your fellow citizens not paying more in taxes, when anyone going into government can tell you they are reckless with spending. Just to put things in perspective, Medicaid is hardly an actual healthcare program as it applies to less than 20% of our population. However it somehow(?) costs more than 4x as much as the entire NHS.
  - rl3 2y ago
    >Just to put things in perspective, Medicaid is hardly an actual healthcare program as it applies to less than 20% of our population. That's still a cool 70 million people. >However it somehow(?) costs more than 4x as much as the entire NHS. Sounds like a good argument for [properly-administered] single-payer, universal healthcare.
    - cuuupid 2y ago
      > That's still a cool 70 million people. Yes, hence why I'm comparing it to the NHS supporting the UK (~70M pop). Also note the NHS's coverage far exceeds Medicaid. > Sounds like a good argument for [properly-administered] single-payer, universal healthcare. The opposite right now! The US government is SO bad at managing healthcare, that they are somehow making the NHS look great. We need to get our bureaucracy and spending under control. Then definitely yes, government funded healthcare, we can have a system closer to Australia in efficacy. This is a tangent to this thread but I think in practice we will probably end up with something closer to the Swiss hybrid system.
      - rl3 2y ago
        Australia or Switzerland? Can't argue with that. I wish I was optimistic as you. Only problem is, I highly doubt any savings realized from spending cuts will materialize in the form of better healthcare. Regulatory capture is rampant, and then there's that whole pesky issue of growing unchecked authoritarianism that has a good chance of not aligning with the will of the people.
        cuuupid 2y ago
        Yeah I can understand the sentiment. I’m being optimistic primarily because the alternative is to accept that our economy is going to eventually go bust and turn us into a debtor society to foreign economies. The building is on fire, closing your eyes or clinging to a bottle of water are both valid reactions!
      - EgoIncarnate 2y ago

insane_dreamer 2y ago

The problem with the military spending is on Congress, because they set the defense budget, not the White House (and certainly not DOGE). But defense doesn't get cut because it props up a huge infrastructure across many states. No senator wants to be the ones to vote to cut that in their state. The US economy is built, to some degree, on the military-industry complex, especially since we offshored all the other manufacturing.