Summary
Vivek Ramaswamy, recently appointed to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has proposed defunding federal programs that lack current congressional authorization.
This could affect programs like veterans’ healthcare, NASA, and early education initiatives, which still receive funding despite expired authorizations.
Ramaswamy argues that cutting these programs could save billions, and he’s committed to targeting expenditures that “don’t advance the interests of American citizens.”
DOGE, co-led by Elon Musk, aims to curb government spending, with Musk estimating potential cuts of up to $2 trillion.
Do it. Cut tricare too. I don’t want those things gone, but holy hell yes please eliminate the willingness of the military to aid you against the constitution. Defund barrack improvements and force married troops to bring their spouses into the barracks while you’re at it.
Crash and burn and let us rebuild America with an understanding it wasn’t immigrants or trans people that did this, it was rich people and fascists.
As a former military child, I largely agree with cutting tricare. It’s pretty good, and military people take for granted that they get socialized Healthcare but not the rest of us. Yeah, “serving the country” and all that, but most military personnel aren’t doing anything that anyone else isn’t doing. Most military personnel are not in combat roles. Everyone should be treated well because everyone benefits the nation. Take away the socialized healthcare of the military and vets and maybe we’ll get socialized healthcare in general.
I doubt this will work, but it’ll at least force military people to come to terms with the fact they have socialized healthcare and how well it works. My dad at least used to argue with me whenever I called it that. I’m not sure if he still thinks it isn’t true. I’m sure other people haven’t even considered that that’s what it is.
Elon musk being like “all that money we’re spending on vets could be going into my pockets.”
The status quo is just a lot more visible, now.
Any woman or veteran or union worker who voted for Trump is going to have a serious case of buyers remorse. I am none of those things but still voted for Harris because it seemed like the responsible thing to do, lesser of two evils. Way lesser it seems.
The leopards are eating our faces!!
Buyers remorse or will they blame someone else?
They’ll blame democrats like always
Well, the democrats didn’t do enough to differentiate themselves from Trump. This is the result 🥄 /s
To be fair that’s at least partially true. Democrats moved hard to the right this election.
Dems did not move to the right at all in this election. If anything Harris policies went beyond Biden.
What an ignorant take
What an ignorant vague assertion with no evidence.
Democrats cannot fail; they can only be failed
This will piss off every single veteran, active service member, and their relatives. I don’t just want this shit to fail, I want people to remember just how little fucks these people give about anyone other than themselves.
Republicans have been cutting vet benefits for years, and it hasn’t stopped them from voting red yet.
I want to see these fucks do this then ask for the military to keep them in office when they violate the constitution
I kinda have lost faith in most of humanity. At this point I think they will follow orders without question while fully knowing that they will be thrown aside like a moldy bag of garbage as soon as their usefulness is done.
If you hear back well they did not realize… you answer with yes, this is how little they care
Remember when if you didn’t “support our troops,” Republicans would ask you why you hated America?
The right wing has never supported veterans
At best, “support our troops” was a version of that dumbass magical thinking that, in earlier times, held that the U.S. lost in Vietnam because Americans didn’t clap for Tinkerbell, err, I mean, support the war. Mostly, it was a thought-terminating cliché.
Yeah, as you rightly point out, it was never about the soldiers themselves.
“Lost in Vietnam”? Oh, no, they were saying much worse than that. It used to be that if you suggested the US lost Vietnam that you were “insulting the bravery of the troops” or some shit like that. It was only after the War on Terror became unpopular that you could say the US lost Vietnam (because, you know, it did) without some jackass wingnut bringing out the faux patriotism.
I learned the ugly truth of that way back in 1990 when I was still in Middle School and Bush Sr. sent Americans to die for oil in Iraq and all of his fans in my town were tying yellow ribbons around the trees in their yard to “support the troops” being sent to die pointlessly.
They confirmed, for anyone paying attention, that that was always performative bullshit.
The good old days when it was republicans who were “if you’re not with us I will enjoy watching you die”
This is amazing. Good. Fuck the troops. Let’s see you garrison your military bases in every other country in the world, losers. You can’t even meet recruiting goals now!
Save billions on essentials while spending trillions in bullshit.
“This bloated liberal socialist program is inefficient and doesn’t work. Because it’s liberal and socialist. So we’re going to get rid of it. We’re planing to plan a replacement plan, but we haven’t planned on when to plan it. But we’ll blame the libs for that too, even though we have essentially captured all branches of the government at this point.”
They’ve learned their lesson from 4 years of failure to repeal and replace Obamacare. “Replacing was hard and expensive and anything that addresses people’s concerns or doesn’t ensure failure to re-elect was to the left of this, so we’ve decided to just repeal and not replace. Get over it loser.”
And people will eat it the fuck up like the hogs they are
"And Goober Nation will believe it when we say that ‘the libs’ are responsible. Despite the fact that we control the presidency, the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court and the news media, because they have the collective memory of a goddamn goldfish. "
Part of me, as an outsider looking in with abject horror, wants to see this happen just because I still hold out hope that it might finally wake up a not-insignificant part of rural and rust-belt America that live off these benefits (or ‘handouts’ according to the GOP) out of their political stupor.
But on the other hand, I know that once it’s gone, it’s very unlikely to be brought back in the immediate future by the current crop of Dems, who seemingly would rather keep dangling it as a carrot (along with restoring ablation access) in order to entice voter turnout.
If it’s gone it’s gone. Those people in rural America who live off handouts and vote R can live with the long term consequences. The only way you will see a change is if they are no longer insulated from the consequences of their actions. Fox
NewsPropaganda is going to be spinning itself in circles to justify why their “gubment program” was ended under Trump.Perhaps they will vote blue in the future and we will have enough of a majority that more liberal policies can be enacted.
Just know that there are people in the US that feel the same. And it’s horrifying.
Then do universal healthcare, right? Right?
Universally leave you to die if you don’t pay, sure.
Typo. Then, not they.
If they really go whole hog and sell off the hospitals and stuff then I would think the next president would just go to a Veteran’s Public Option. There’s a world in which 5 years from now we prove Medicare for All works because they deleted the entire side of the VA that does healthcare.
they just want Russia to be the top superpower
Don’t know anything about top superpower, but Russia already has better healthcare than american veterans. Even tourists have better healthcare in Russia than americans in America.
most so-called third world countries have better healthcare than the US. what I’m talking about is influence over there world. they’re dismantling the country, and even though they’re already terrible at education and healthcare, it will get worse.
Shameless, veterans risk their lives for their country, the least the govt can do is give them healthcare
Unfortunately for veterans, they aren’t risking their lives for their country. They’re risking their lives for the special interests of corporate oligarchs who couldn’t care less about them.
I know but that’s a hard sell for poor young recruits, if they knew this more they’d charge like mercenaries
How is veteran healthcare unauthorized?
It was authorized, but it had an expiration date. Now it’s something that we just take for granted so much we never even thought about having to re-authorize it.
OIC. Well snowballs chance when orange twit assumes the throne
Really surprised he’s the first republican to try cutting it. They’ve been going after vets for years.
It’s a political hand grenade. Of course Trump is the only one willing or able to eat it.
Is it really a political hand grenade? Seems like majority of vets vote red no matter what.
Nah, they’re observant. They have to be. They’re trained to be. They may be young and dumb, but they’ll see shit like this. Trust me, I’ve been there. The young ones may vote red but the older ones dont. And that matters in the military.
Watching the latter half of GWOT veterans eat the bait on the Republican line has been really painful for those of us who got home in 2004 and found out what Bush had been telling the people while we were fighting. At least Obama was honest about why he sent us over. It was a fool’s errand but better than a snipe hunt disguised as regime change.
I’d like to believe you, but 65% red is a pretty high number. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/veterans-vote-trump/
That’s in the face of nearly every military leader that had contact with Trump saying he was unfit, Trump having that weird campaign event at a cemetery, etc.
65% with Fox News being shoveled into every chow hall in the military, open recruiting for the republican party, and forced church. That’s the highest they’re able to get. And a bunch of those do pay attention. In 2020 Active duty voted blue because conservative service members either crossed party lines or stayed home. The veterans who swing hard right get fully captured by the alt right you tube crap too. Come for the cool guns, stay for the speech about Trump. Gods I could go on for hours about that whirlpool of tactical influencers.
But the upside is that anyone who has even a couple braincells no onboard the right wing train bounces right off that stuff. And he might delete our healthcare, but to be honest, and this is the important bit; Veterans don’t have enough votes to swing national or state elections. He does this and it’s everyone listening to us complain about the sudden lack of healthcare after 2 major wars that he has to worry about.
Not for millenia would I have realized that Department of Government Efficiency stood for DoGE. What a funny little boy Elon is.
FWIW, this breaks from the Two Santas Strategy. This Santa is suppose to be funding things conservatives want, while at the same time reducing taxes (on the rich), thereby driving the deficit up without making their voters mad. If you actually cut funding for a bunch of stuff people rely on, you will earn the ire of the voters, that’s why no one ever does it.
Yeah, there will be a core of people who will defend Trump and Musk to their self-inflicted death, but those people are in the minority. Most Americans (and most people in the world) voted against the incumbent this year because they were unfortunately there during a time of inevitable inflation. And they’ll do it again if their lives continue to get materially worse over the next few years.
I can’t help but wonder how we would be sitting right now if Trump had won in 2020. But we’re due for a generational crisis, and I don’t think that wouldn’t have been nearly as exciting.
