Posted on 02/09/2025 9:31:07 AM PST by SoConPubbie
When the trillion-dollar American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was passed, those “shovel ready jobs” in fiscal year 2009, that was the last year of a full federal budget. Every budget year thereafter has been a process of continuing resolutions and omnibus spending. Within the CR process they use “baseline budgeting,” which essentially accepts all prior spending as the starting point for the next spending allotment within the Continuing Resolution process.
That means, the $1 trillion ARRA was not only spent in 2009 (Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi on behalf of Barack Obama), but it was also spent again in ever year thereafter. Without a formally followed federal budget process, every year there is an extra trillion dollars (that’s a thousand billion) injected into federal spending. That accounts for $16 trillion of the current debt. Make sense now?
Elon Musk and DOGE announce the following:
To be clear, what the DOGE team and U.S Treasury have jointly agreed makes sense is the following:
– Require that all outgoing government payments have a payment categorization code, which is necessary in order to pass financial audits. This is frequently left blank, making audits almost impossible.
– All payments must also include a rationale for the payment in the comment field, which is currently left blank. Importantly, we are not yet applying ANY judgment to this rationale but simply requiring that SOME attempts be made to explain the payment more than NOTHING!
– The DO-NOT-PAY list of entities known to be fraudulent or people who are dead or are probable fronts for terrorist organizations or do not match Congressional appropriations must actually be implemented and not ignored. Also, it can currently take up to a year to get on this list, which is far too long. This list should be updated at least weekly, if not daily.
The above super obvious and necessary changes are being implemented by existing, long-time career government employees, not anyone from DOGE. It is ridiculous that these changes didn’t exist already!
Yesterday, I was told that there are currently over $100B/year of entitlements payments to individuals with no SSN or even a temporary ID number. If accurate, this is extremely suspicious.
When I asked if anyone at Treasury had a rough guess for what percentage of that number is unequivocal and obvious fraud, the consensus in the room was about half, so $50B/year or $1B/week!!
This is utterly insane and must be addressed immediately. {link}
Within the budget process there are two different facets. Congress is charged by the Constitution with making decisions about how to spend public money. Those spending decisions are split into two parts: authorization and appropriations. In the recent political era, the “authorization” process has essentially been nulled; no one ever asks if the program (Ukraine, Israel, FBI, etc.) should be funded.
“Authorization” is done by Congress via legislation that “can establish, continue, or modify an agency, program, or activity for a fixed or indefinite period of time,” per the Congressional Research Service. In other words, authorization is Congress saying that money can be spent on a given item — not that it necessarily will be spent on that item.
“Appropriations” are done by Congress via legislation that authorizes agencies to make payments from the federal Treasury (i.e. it allows them to spend the money that had previously been authorized). Appropriations bills are ordinarily passed each year, but in recent years it has been common for Congress to fund the government “on autopilot” via continuing resolutions that simply allow agencies to continue spending the same amount of money they were spending under the previous funding bill.
The external recipients of the appropriation spending, the lobbyists, are the ones driving the continuation of the CR approach. The lobbyists pay congress via campaign donations. Those donations come from congressional appropriation. The CR process maintains the largesse.
Pursuant to the Consumer Financial Protection Act, I have notified the Federal Reserve that CFPB will not be taking its next draw of unappropriated funding because it is not “reasonably necessary” to carry out its duties. The Bureau’s current balance of $711.6 million is in fact…
— Russ Vought (@russvought) February 9, 2025
“Why is it so easy for DOGE to identify wasteful spending?”
What about the NY Judge?
Do you know what is happening in regard to the Judge blocking DOGE from looking at the US Treasury Dept. books?
What about the NY Judge?
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I’m wondering the same thing.
Trump team needs to sell the elimination of federal government workers as an Inflation Reduction Initiative. By firing half or more of the federal workforce with their overblown salaries and benefits, you now have fewer dollar$ chasing the same amount of goods. Cut the pay and benefits of those that are left for more inflation reduction. Encourage states to cut state, county, and city bloated payrolls and the effect on inflation will be exponential.
Good. I thought I was stressing alone. 😉
Your assuming that all of those people are real. I’m assuming that a decent percentage of them are ghost employees.
After that, analyze the cross-subsidization of health insurance premiums under Obamacare and make transparent on each monthly premium paid how much is bing paid for the individual's insurance and how much is buying down the premiums of others. Do that and the political support for "Obamacare" will evaporate.
it’s easy when you are a MUSKeteer... muskets and swords, muskets and swords! intimidating, sharp and devastatingly effective, as we have seen. now if only there were another group as effective that could “persuade” the activist judges to stand down.
Hopefully we’ll see the answer on this thread.
That judge included the Secretary of the Treasury from looking into it. No way that can stand.
Musk will know how to deal with it.
Somebody is spending that money.
Hopefully swinging gently in the breeze.
This is only partially right. In addition to the baseline being carried forward 3% plus inflation is added to the previous amount every year. This is per the congressional budget act of, I believe, 1972 and all of its subsequent spawn.
The budget needs to be scrapped and a new Zero Base Budget generated.
What if all the other agencies that had their Trump-appointed appointees confirmed say the same thing as what Vought did, that they won’t take any money that’s suspect.
What would that judge do then?
Ignored. Just as Biden ignored SCOTUS ruling on student loan debt.
Pam Bondi isn’t going to send the US Marshals. If anyone is prosecuted for defying a court order, Trump has pardon power.
There's your answer where much of the $ lands.
I wish that Musk or Trump would understand that understanding and ending provisions of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 and all amendments to it are key to controlling rampant spending and the whole shut down cycle and CR’s. Without killing that beast there can be no lasting reform or actual budget.
Some of us have been screaming this for years without notice.
Why? Why doesn’t anybody understand this is one of our very biggest problems?
Also unsweeten federal retirement provisions. Just about nobody in the private sector can even think of retiring in 20 years like some government employees can. Private sector retirement reality is more like 40 years.
I am onboard as that would end all the double and triple dipping going on.
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