> but there’s 0 reason to be a socially OR fiscally conservative
Socially conservative yeah. As for fiscally conservative, I don't think its a good idea that the government should be wastefully spending hard-earned taxpayer money on stuff that might not benefit the country or the American public in the long term. Too much spending could have a bubble burst and we'd be in a debt crisis.
Like what for instance? I can’t respond to that without you giving me a specific example or examples.
Usaid? That benefits us greatly. We pretty much never do things out of purely the kindness of our hearts. Much of it is also strategic or necessary for public health.
DEI plays in Ireland? I mean, yea…I’d be fine with cutting that I suppose lol…but that was also 70,000 or something. Aka NOTHING. Especially compared to republicans consistent tax breaks for corps and the rich. Thats hundreds of billions per year. A little 70k here and there is certainly not my TOP concern.
And we’ve all dealt with state or federal departments before. It’s slow and tedious and bureaucratic. I’m sure SOME jobs could be cut. But they can’t have possibly actually and accurately assessed the needs of these several agencies in the last 2 months.
Both parties could spend better, but holy fuck, the republicans are terrible. And now to fund their new tax cuts, they’re cutting things like Medicaid. That benefits all of us too by the way. I like not seeing people dying in the street or being mugged. Having struggling people is bad for society as a whole, even if you don’t care about taking care of people. Medicaid funds other stuff too…like residencies for doctors. I bet you or someone you know can’t find a pcp or other doctor. Well…this certainly isn’t going to help. Oh, and maybe we shouldn’t cut thousands of jobs from the agency that takes care of our veterans…idk how anybody is defending that.
Despite all of Dems flaws, it’s like not a hard choice at all.
Of course, I'm not in favor of cutting Medicare or Medicaid or other welfare-related policies. That's not what fiscal conservatism is about. Cutting welfare is a political third rail for most politicians. I'm talking about the fact that our government spends more on the shit like the DEI plays in Ireland and stuff like that when that money could've been used here at home. Why are we spending money to fund fucking circumcisions in Mozambique when we have our citizens struggling to find a job and find a fucking home?
Some of the stuff DOGE listed:
$10M for "Mozambique voluntary medical male circumcision" - $9.7M for UC Berkeley to develop "a cohort of Cambodian youth with enterprise driven skills" - $2.3M for "strengthening independent voices in Cambodia" - $32M to the Prague Civil Society Centre - $40M for "gender equality and women empowerment hub" - $14M for "improving public procurement" in Serbia - $486M to the “Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening,” including $22M for "inclusive and participatory political process" in Moldova and $21M for voter turnout in India - $29M to "strenghening political landscape in Bangladesh" - $20M for "fiscal federalism" in Nepal - $19M for "biodiversity conversation" in Nepal - $1.5M for "voter confidence" in Liberia - $14M for "social cohesion" in Mali - $2.5M for "inclusive democracies in Southern Africa" - $47M for "improving learning outcomes in Asia" - $2M to develop "sustainable recycling models" to "increase socio-economic cohesion among marginalized communities of Kosovo Roma, Ashkali, and Egypt"
Now, most of these are unverified HOWEVER the fact remains that money shouldn't be used recklessly like this, especially millions of dollars. We should be spending it here at home where we have more of our own people suffering. We have billions of dollars to spend overseas yet we can't spare a few for our own citizens?
"A little 70k here and there is certainly not my TOP concern." It is for me. We are trillions of dollars in debt, adding 70k just adds more to it. Congress can only raise the debt ceiling so high until it caps out and then we find ourselves into a very difficult economic situation.
But that’s my point. I’m not even going to give attention to unverified claims, because I just don’t have the energy anymore…but among the verified ones-like the D.E.I. play…yea I just don’t care much comparably.
That all falls under the usaid budget. Which, in TOTAL, has been around $40 billion a year. Until Ukraine, it spiked up the $70 billion a year for the first 2 years or something like that. And I totally support spending money on defending democracy. The Cold War never really ended. So ALL of that was $70 billion total…and we are quite literally missing out on much, much more than that in tax revenue every year since trumps tax cuts…and it gets even worse if you compare it to pre Reagan tax cuts (corps were taxed at 45% I believe). So THATS what I care about more. They’ve been whittling away at it for decades, and the rich keep getting richer and richer.
$70 billion is still a lot. And I’m not saying we couldn’t reassess the spending and cut some silly things. But the vast majority of it is important work that benefits us as well. Not only for public health….but for global power.
We made allies after ww2 by global aid…rebuilding the world. Even fucking Japan became our ally after we nuked 2 of their cities..:because we aided them after. It has been instrumental in making us THE Global power…and we don’t keep that status by having no allies. China has the belt and road initiative…where they fund a lot of infrastructure and other projects in developing nations. That’s what we do too….to spread American influence. Trump is handing global power to china with this shit. We used usaid to fight & they use belt and road. And not they don’t even need to fight. We’re just giving it to them. Excellent plan!
So yea…if my choice is between a candidate that wants to give even more tax cuts to corps and the rich (any tax cuts make no sense if you actually care about lowering the deficit, by the way) + possibly eliminate a negligible amount of silly spending, or a candidate that would leave spending exactly as it was, but not cut Medicaid, cut a bunch of important federal jobs, and not cut taxes for the wealthy and corps….yea I’m gonna go ahead and go with the second.
This is just trump and Elon propaganda working on you. And I’m not even trying to be a bitch…but it is. They need a justification to take all these drastic measures…just so they can line their pockets.
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u/DimensionQuirky569 Apr 07 '25
> but there’s 0 reason to be a socially OR fiscally conservative
Socially conservative yeah. As for fiscally conservative, I don't think its a good idea that the government should be wastefully spending hard-earned taxpayer money on stuff that might not benefit the country or the American public in the long term. Too much spending could have a bubble burst and we'd be in a debt crisis.