25th amendment

[whell]

Originally Posted by barbara

The budget proposal will be devastating to social services.

It will negatively impact the most vulnerable among us.

But..... We will have the strongest military on the planet.
Oh.... Yeah..... We already have the strongest military on the planet.

Can't wait to see disabled, elderly, and children living in the streets and eating out of garbage cans.

..... Just making America great....(sigh )

Of course it will. Every dollar that is removed from the Federal budget causes one more child to eat out of a garbage can.

Here we go again. We apparently must define success by the increases to the social services budget year after year, rather than by the increase the number of folks who are moved off of it and into a position of being self sustaining.

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by whell

Of course it will. Every dollar that is removed from the Federal budget causes one more child to eat out of a garbage can.

Here we go again. We apparently must define success by the increases to the social services budget year after year, rather than by the increase the number of folks who are moved off of it and into a position of being self sustaining.

Conversely, Republicans think that every dollar spent by DoD, the largest and most wasteful of all government agencies, is well spent and that more is always needed. In any event, your Trumpenfuhrer's budget is dead on arrival and serves no purpose other than to show how little he actually cares about his base as they are the ones hurt most by his budget proposal.

[barbara]

Originally Posted by whell

Of course it will. Every dollar that is removed from the Federal budget causes one more child to eat out of a garbage can.

Here we go again. We apparently must define success by the increases to the social services budget year after year, rather than by the increase the number of folks who are moved off of it and into a position of being self sustaining.

Whell, funds for social services have been pretty much stagnant since the Clinton administration. Don't give me that crap about increases from year to year....

And, people do move off welfare, but it takes programs that are funded to make that happen.

What really drives me nuts is that people think nothing of taking in a stray cat or dog.... Taking it to a shelter.... Donating to animal charities..... But when it comes to people....those same people turn the other way.

It is just a fact that not everyone has the where with all, the resources, or the ability to make ends meet. So instead of treating them like that stray cat or dog.... They are ignored and looked down upon.


There is an old saying which I have found to be true.... If you are hungry, don't bother going to a rich man's house but there will always be room at the table at a poor man's house.

[MrPots]

Originally Posted by whell

Of course it will. Every dollar that is removed from the Federal budget causes one more child to eat out of a garbage can.

Here we go again. We apparently must define success by the increases to the social services budget year after year, rather than by the increase the number of folks who are moved off of it and into a position of being self sustaining.

The goal would be the more people in the work force, the lower the wages and benefits. A win win for the 1%. Especially with AI taking over half the jobs.

American success is measured by how much money we pump into weapons of mass destruction around the world and at home. We spend more money on "defense" than every other country combined, yet the only freedoms we ever lose are by our own hand, by our own rulers. What a scam.

While other countries take care of their people, we push hate and war. What a great country huh?

[MrPots]

Originally Posted by barbara

Whell, funds for social services have been pretty much stagnant since the Clinton administration. Don't give me that crap about increases from year to year....

And, people do move off welfare, but it takes programs that are funded to make that happen.

What really drives me nuts is that people think nothing of taking in a stray cat or dog.... Taking it to a shelter.... Donating to animal charities..... But when it comes to people....those same people turn the other way.

It is just a fact that not everyone has the where with all, the resources, or the ability to make ends meet. So instead of treating them like that stray cat or dog.... They are ignored and looked down upon.


There is an old saying which I have found to be true.... If you are hungry, don't bother going to a rich man's house but there will always be room at the table at a poor man's house.

I would add that an estimated 25% of Americans have some form of mental illness. Most are republicans. Reagan closed the mental hospitals so they are all out on the street. Another victim of conservative policy.

[whell]

Originally Posted by finnbow

Conversely, Republicans think that every dollar spent by DoD, the largest and most wasteful of all government agencies, is well spent and that more is always needed. In any event, your Trumpenfuhrer's budget is dead on arrival and serves no purpose other than to show how little he actually cares about his base as they are the ones hurt most by his budget proposal.

More of your myopic, twisted BS, Finn. The Pentagon is as prolific as any other part of gov't when it comes to wasting money. Its also apparently lost on you that members of both parties scream like stuck pigs when it comes to closing a military base or cutting a military project that's financially beneficial to that congressperson's home district.

What's dead on arrival is your sense of reality.

[whell]

Originally Posted by barbara

Whell, funds for social services have been pretty much stagnant since the Clinton administration. Don't give me that crap about increases from year to year....

Sorry, but here's some "crap" for you, the source is from Federal Reserve Economic Data / St Louis Federal Reserve

https://blogs-images.forbes.com/mike....jpg?width=960

Originally Posted by barbara

And, people do move off welfare, but it takes programs that are funded to make that happen.

What really drives me nuts is that people think nothing of taking in a stray cat or dog.... Taking it to a shelter.... Donating to animal charities..... But when it comes to people....those same people turn the other way.

It is just a fact that not everyone has the where with all, the resources, or the ability to make ends meet. So instead of treating them like that stray cat or dog.... They are ignored and looked down upon.

There is an old saying which I have found to be true.... If you are hungry, don't bother going to a rich man's house but there will always be room at the table at a poor man's house.

Why is it axiomatic among the left that a reduction in spending in welfare MUST result in a reduction in benefits paid? Just above in this thread, it was observed how politics intervenes in properly addressing wasteful defense spending. The same politics also intervenes discussing reductions in welfare spending. Articles like those below appear from time to time, but we lack the political will to address the core issues, and the waste continues. In fact, in the article below, the GAO admits they don't even know how to correctly quantify the degree of waste in this case:

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articl...l-Programs-GAO

The federal government has no idea how many tax dollars it’s wasting on redundant federal programs every year—but it’s likely in the neighborhood of $45 billion.

That’s according to the Government Accountability Office, which identified more than two dozen new areas of inefficiency and overlap in its annual report to Congress. This is on top of the more than 160 redundant areas that the GAO has identified in its three previous reports.

“It's impossible to account for how much money is wasted through duplication, in part because the government doesn't keep track of which programs each agency is responsible for,” Comptroller Gene Dodaro said prepared congressional testimony.[/B]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.036ab17056d6

For every given problem, there are often several, if not dozens, of programs intended to tackle it. There isn't just one health care program -- there are Medicaid, Medicare, SCHIP the Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies, the employer insurance deduction, etc. There isn't just one higher education subsidy -- there are the American Opportunity credit, Pell grants, Perkins loans, Stafford loans, etc. And that's not even every federal program that serves those two sectors.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...grams/7435221/

It takes 10 different offices at the Department of Health and Human Services to run programs addressing AIDS in minority communities. Autism research is spread out over 11 different agencies. Eight agencies at the Defense Department are looking for prisoners of war and missing in action. And Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado has eight different satellite control centers to control 10 satellite programs.

Now, when you read stuff like this, it sounds like absolute idiocy in action. But it has been going on for years, wasting trillions of dollars in the process. No one is accountable because accountability is buried in politics. There's no collective political will to fix any of this, so it just gets worse, and the budget for most of these agencies goes up every year triggering even more waste.

And guess who pays for it: you and me. IMHO, its idiotic to bray about "cuts" when looking at all of this collective waste. There is absolutely no reason it needs to continue. We can do better.

[sheltiedave]

Shell, you are so eloquently right. Let's cut the waste, and start by creating a single payer health care system.

[whell]

Originally Posted by sheltiedave

Shell, you are so eloquently right. Let's cut the waste, and start by creating a single payer health care system.

Right. Since government is inherently wasteful, let's create a system to ensure even more dollars are wasted in health care delivery.

[donquixote99]

Originally Posted by whell

Right. Since government is inherently wasteful, let's create a system to ensure even more dollars are wasted in health care delivery.

Larger private organizations are also inherently wasteful. For example, I know a mega-corporation that paid $4000 to put a new transmission in an old beat-up van worth about $1000 when the transmission worked.

Same outfit spent at least $200K setting up a mechanized facility to load retail containers from bulk, then abandoned the operation because there was no money to fix a compressor.