White House rescinds federal aid freeze
cnn.com
cnn.com
So trump blames the media, gets a bunch of blow back from officials, a Judge comes in to block part of it... And they choose to blame the media to upkeep their narrative when they need to backpedal.
Gonna be a long 4 years. But at least they are getting everything through for free.
https://nasawatch.com/transition/omb-memo-about-payment-free...
The State Department has issued the following guidance
https://www.state.gov/emergency-humanitarian-waiver-to-forei...
However, someone in charge is interpreting programs like PEPFAR as not "life saving" so all data systems needed by medical personnel and researchers are still down.
Besides, solving the real high level problems are going to be a disaster.
There are two ways for them to cut the budget. 1: Cut programs - 2: Increase efficiency
1. Reduce programs. The problem for them is that Red states are overwhelming subsidized by Blue states. Just cutting programs across the board is going to hurt their constituents the most. https://apnews.com/article/north-america-business-local-taxe...
2. Reduce costs. The reason government projects are so expensive is because of their insane review and oversight requirements. And the reason they have these is because of their constant exposure to lawsuits from citizens and NGOs. Cutting costs would involve eliminating review processes and recusing planners - you would effectively need to increase the power of the federal government to make it more efficient.
I expect the administration to come back with a smarter list and a more targeted set of grants to cancel. But this whole endeavor is going to be a massive lark for them.
Maybe, but in my experience, most of the overhead was there to avoid any kind of passive corruption for low-level employees. Also help avoid pressure, because high-level employees have no reasons to pressure temp worker/low-level employees (if they want to use their access to do a qui pro quo, they can, but they couldn't use a temp like me to do their bidding).
I was a temp in a bureaucracy highly susceptible to corruption though (IRS equivalent), maybe this kind of overhead can be found in bureaucracies without as easy access to money/power as mine had, but in that case, i would argue that it is more habit than external pressure.
twitter really has gone downhill
Is it as much as the right pretends it is? Is it the cause of the ballooning federal debt? No on both. But it does exist.
And honestly, the worst thing you can do is have someone try to run the organization allocating those funds as if he's the CEO of his own personal organization.
I'm no economist nor businessman though, so I won't pretend I can answer that with confidence.
But hey, they might lobby to finally get rid of penny production. So that's a micro-win.
I definitely wouldn't claim that the government is on a scale of 10x the waste of corporate. But the structure of government budgeting does make it easier to create more efficiency
The US medical system is a public-private partnership, and it's likely the most expensive system in the world for what the benefits it provides (see "List of countries by total health expenditure per capita" on Wikipedia). The government can only optimize here if it's willing to rein in the for-profit middlemen.
To paraphrase a quote, I'd be tempted to call an obsession with efficiency a hobgoblin of little minds. Or maybe it's just an excuse to cut programs.
Literally every organisation I've been in has had "waste", but most of them have been smart enough to realise that you don't want to spend thousands of person-hours measuring every tiny little thing and doing wildly complex RoI analyses (especially on stuff where it's almost impossible to figure out anyway because there are too many variables), and instead focus on having metrics around the outcomes that they do care about.
> "When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains"
Trump's nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/27/trump-federal-eorkers-inspe...
I've been far more screwed by the private sector than by people in government.
It's Musk with Trump's authority.
https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2025/01/28/warren-to-mu...
“My recommendations would reduce spending on wasteful programs and contracts, would cut out unfair loopholes and giveaways to the wealthiest Americans, would make the government more efficient and effective.”