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Comment by pmezard | Hacker News Reader

What mechanisms prevent the "pork-barreling and self-serving political advocacies" to take effect when re-instating some of these spendings?

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A great question! I can't think of anything that will. I think one idea would be to trim the budget broadly every year in a similar vein to align with receipts and let the people periodically decide anew what to fund.

So stability has zero value?

Definitely not, but there don't seem to be any structures which counter the political incentives to continuously increase spending. And only one federal government in the last 50 years has run a balanced budget.

So a party which has almost absolute control of the political system but can't be trusted in setting up said structures is the party you trust with slashing and burning spending in a way that "balances" the budget.

Why do you think there aren't incentives at play here in whats being cut?

> Why do you think there aren't incentives at play here in whats being cut?

Because it seems across-the-board with some limited exceptions.

> A: No, the pause does not apply across-the-board. It is expressly limited to programs, projects, and activities implicated by the President’s Executive Orders, such as ending DEI, the green new deal, and funding nongovernmental organizations that undermine the national interest.

> Any program not implicated by the President’s Executive Orders is not subject to the pause.

The Executive Orders listed in the guidance are:

Protecting the American People Against Invasion

Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid

Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements

Unleashing American Energy

Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing

Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government

Enforcing the Hyde Amendment

Sure does seem like it's across the board...

I’m not normally anti-sarcasm but it’s really unhelpful here.

For pork-barreling, there is (or could be, it is not yet the law on the federal level) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-subject_rule

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