Some budget-cutting recommendations

Senator Scott is trying to show that he and his party are not the only ones proposing dramatic changes to Social Security and Medicare. Someone discovered a clip of the current president Joe Biden arguing for serious changes to Social Security. Bit of a problem with using the clip as any sort of evidence is that people, even politicians, can change their minds. If the GOP could show that Biden continued to call for changes to Social Security, then yes, it would be appropriate to call him a hypocrite.

Representative Gaetz demonstrates in his zeal to cut spending that he hates democracy and opposes Western values.

At least Representative Greene has been spending a bit of her time actually looking through the budget so as to make specific proposals. Her budget proposals are based on going line by line through the budget and finding specific items to cut. This, in my own humble opinion, is the only way to approach this job!

Her first recommended cut is to not find a way to build better latrines. This strikes me as the proposal that only a comfortable, middle class woman who has never been outside the US, or at least has never been outside an area that’s been built to be a tourist destination. In the Navy, I’ve been to some non-tourist-type places and believe me, better latrines are a worthwhile project.

Study the emissions of wood heaters? Seems doubtful, but I’d need to see more detail before I could agree or disagree.

“Taxpayers should never be paying unelected bureaucrats to undermine our democracy.” Yeah, okay, but the budget is there as a result of legislators voting on specific projects. Bureaucrats don’t just arbitrarily come up with projects by themselves.

“Global Disinformation Index.” Is there the slightest doubt that the US and the world are awash in disinformation? There may be questions about this project and there may be a need for more oversight and close-up management, but it’s hardly controversial that something needs to be done about rampant disinformation.

Priority: “stopping ALL evil and cruel animal cruelty experiments that are funded by taxpayer dollars.” Yeah, I’ll go with that. Again, I would take a close and careful look at the projects to make sure that that’s what’s happening. The only way “gain-of-function” studies would be dangerous would be if they were carried out under non-scientifically-approved circumstances. That appears to have been the case in Wuhan, China, as the scientists there were apparently rushing through projects without taking the time or spending the money to make sure everything was being done safely.

“We must stop funding war in Ukraine and push for peace!“ Erm, Ukraine is a liberal democracy, Russia is an oppressive, authoritarian, centralized state. Is Greene suggesting that the US doesn’t have a vested interest in supporting democracies when they’re under attack? Is there any reasonable probability that either side is ready to open up peace negotiations? Ukraine wants to regain all of the territory that was lost since Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, Russia wants to rebuild the old Soviet Union, when Ukraine was a Soviet Socialist Republic under the direct control of Moscow.

“We are on the verge of defaulting our country’s debts…” Only and strictly because Republicans insist on playing dangerous games with the debt ceiling! Not because of anything that unavoidable!

Foreign aid has been an easy target since forever. The great majority of it comes immediately and directly back to the US in terms of purchases of arms, food and other types of national assistance. There may indeed be something that can be cut safely without damaging foreign relations, but I’d take a close, careful and detailed look before cutting anything.

“The past 2 yrs Democrats spent more money in history…” Yes, they did, because there was a need for it! Because Republicans have been holding back needed spending since 2011, when the GOP took control of the House and in subsequent years, when they kept control of at least one of the three branches (House, Senate or Presidency). When Democrats finally took control of all three branches, there was a big backlog of spending that needed to be done. Also, Covid required lots of spending.

“It’s easy to cut spending because for decades our government budgets have been the absurdly stuffed with stupid spending.” Ronald Reagan could make a case fo this back in 1981 because Democrats had indeed gotten fat and lazy and had permitted unnecessary spending to occur, but the days of finding “low-hanging fruit,” spending project that can be easily cut, are long gone. Greene made a good attempt, but she has failed to prove otherwise.