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Medicare, medicaid and SS also give some opportunity for grift, and so does defense budget (I mean, if climate change is a threat to national security, we can finance climate change projects through defense budget, right? And if racism is a public health issue, we can finance DEI programs via healthcare budgets as well) we still have almost a trillion dollars in discretionary non-defense spending. It is true that solving the budget balance without addressing mandatory spending is not possible. But I am not talking about solving the budget yet, I am just talking about cutting off the most aggressive leeches, and thus forcing them to at least play on equal footing. My point is not about solving the budget - that can come later - but about denying the enemy the resources which should be either deployed to more worthy causes or returned to (or not taken from) the taxpayers. If the Left wants to donate to their favorite causes, they are welcome to, but without the help of the IRS.
And even Krugman (who one can usually rely on distorting the reality as much as possible to benefit The Party) admits this:
The schoolteachers part is most likely a lie (I didn't check but I know who Krugman is) but the preceding part is true - significant chunk of federal money goes as "aid" to local budgets, where it is rerouted - either directly, or through a basic fungibility trick - to various pet causes. Establishing transparency and control over this would do the conservative cause a lot of good - but they are doing virtually nothing about it.
Medicaid is mostly block granted to states, so no room for grift at the federal level. SS is mostly giving money to oldsters, where grift is hard. (Uncle Sam knows your date of birth and contribution record). There is significant retail rorting of SSDI, but mostly by Red Tribers so not something a Trump-led DOGE would want to go after.
Medicare and military procurement are where the big grift is, and therefore where it makes sense to start if you want to root out waste, fraud and efficiency. In terms of who should lead such an effort, Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) is the US government's leading expert on Medicare fraud, having led one of the largest Medicare frauds in history as CEO of Columbia/HCA. Another expert on Medicare fraud who owes Trump a favour is Phil Esformes, who bilked Medicare out of $1.3 billion before being pardoned by Trump.
Yes, and you would think they would have some provisions so that the database wouldn't have records showing 100+ year old people being paid, and other invalid cases being identified, but that's not the case. They can make it clean, they just didn't bother to.
What this is based on?
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