The 10 Worst Republican Budget Gimmicks
The 10 Worst Republican Budget Gimmicks
https://reason.com/2025/03/13/the-10-worst-republican-budget-gimmicks/
Tag: spending
Trump lauds Schumer’s ‘guts’ in backing bill to avoid shutdown
“The Senate minority leader, both privately to his caucus Thursday and in a floor speech shortly after, said he would vote to advance a GOP-written stopgap to fund the government through September. He said Republicans’ spending bill is “very bad.” But he argued the “potential for a shutdown has consequences for America that are much, much worse” and would empower President Donald Trump and Elon Musk to further gut federal agencies.”
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/03/14/congress/trump-congratulates-schumer-00230577
Judge orders urgent release of DOGE records, citing ‘unprecedented’ power and ‘unusual secrecy’
“A federal judge has ruled that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is wielding so much power that its records will likely have to be opened to the public under federal law.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said the vast and “unprecedented” authority of DOGE, formally known as the U.S. Digital Service, combined with its “unusual secrecy” warrant the urgent release of its internal documents under the Freedom of Information Act.
“The authority exercised by USDS across the federal government and the dramatic cuts it has apparently made with no congressional input appear to be unprecedented,” Cooper wrote in a 37-page opinion.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/10/judge-orders-doge-record-release-00223151
USDA cancels $1B in local food purchasing for schools, food banks
“The Agriculture Department has axed two programs that gave schools and food banks money to buy food from local farms and ranchers, halting more than $1 billion in federal spending.
Roughly $660 million that schools and child care facilities were counting on to purchase food from nearby farms through the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program in 2025 has been canceled, according to the School Nutrition Association.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/10/usda-cancels-local-food-purchasing-for-schools-food-banks-00222796
GOP gets the upper hand on spending, with improbable help from the hard right
“It took an all-out lobbying blitz that involved promises of future spending cuts, a scattering of presidential threats and 11th-hour policy concessions involving tariffs and visas for Afghan refugees. But in a 217-213 vote, the House passed a seven-month funding patch without needing a single Democrat. Republicans planned to immediately leave Washington and hand Senate Democrats a stark dilemma with the threat of a government shutdown looming early Saturday morning.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/11/republicans-unite-spending-bill-trump-00225356
DOGE Has a Math Problem
DOGE’s wall of receipts has been full of basic mistakes that makes it look like DOGE isn’t familiar with the organizations they are cutting.
DOGE is less a efficient tech support generally improving the efficiency of government, and more a political project broadly cutting things they don’t like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt36SP81zxA
VA pauses billions in cuts lauded by Musk
“The Department of Veterans Affairs has temporarily suspended billions of dollars in planned contract cuts following concerns that the move would hurt critical veterans’ health services, lawmakers and veterans service organizations said Wednesday.
The pause affects hundreds of VA contracts that Secretary Doug Collins a day earlier described as simply consulting deals, whose cancellation would save $2 billion as the Trump administration works to slash costs across the federal government.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/26/va-pauses-billions-in-cuts-lauded-by-musk-00206372
Republicans Push Devastating Cuts To Medicaid
Republicans passing cuts to Medicaid, claiming they are cutting fraud, when they are mostly just cutting Medicaid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3tZXu7tDsk
The biggest spending cuts in Trump’s new budget bill — and how they could affect you
“Trump’s new budget blueprint, which is also known as a resolution, does three things.
First, it calls for extending the president’s 2017 tax cuts, which would otherwise expire at the end of the year, at a cost of $4 trillion over the next decade. It also makes room for another $500 billion in tax cuts Trump talked about on the campaign trail, such as no tax on tips, for a grand total of $4.5 trillion.
Second, the blueprint greenlights modest spending increases targeted toward immigration enforcement (up to $110 billion), customs and border protection (up to $90 billion) and military involvement in border security (up to $100 million) — top Trump priorities.
And finally, at the behest of conservative deficit hawks, the resolution mandates $2 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years to partially offset new border spending and the trillions in revenue lost to Trump’s tax cuts. (Even then, the new budget would still directly add $2.8 trillion to the deficit.)
For now, Trump’s budget blueprint doesn’t say which programs will be slashed; instead, it instructs specific House committees to cut specific amounts from the programs under their jurisdiction.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/the-biggest-spending-cuts-in-trumps-new-budget-bill–and-how-they-could-affect-you-172157094.html
Elon Musk Implausibly Claims ‘Competence and Caring’ Can Cut the Federal Budget Deficit in Half
“contrary to what Musk claimed, tackling “waste, fraud, and abuse” cannot possibly generate enough savings to eliminate the annual budget deficit, which was nearly $2 trillion in fiscal year 2024, let alone reduce the ever-climbing national debt, which currently exceeds $36 trillion, including $29 trillion in debt held by the public.”
…
“Even if Musk succeeds in curtailing “waste, fraud, and abuse,” there is only so much he can accomplish by focusing on “driving change through executive action based on existing legislation,” which is how he described his agenda last November. Any serious attempt to reduce federal borrowing will require new legislation that addresses the main drivers of federal spending, including Social Security, Medicare, and the military budget. But the platform on which Trump ran takes all those things off the table while promising pricey policies that will only exacerbate the problem that Musk decries.”
https://reason.com/2025/02/12/elon-musk-implausibly-claims-competence-and-caring-can-cut-the-federal-budget-deficit-in-half/