Rand Paul Warns Musk & Ramaswamy About The Swamp's Upcoming DOGE Dodge
Posted by freedomforall 2 weeks, 1 day ago to Politics
Excerpt:
"SEN. RAND PAUL: One of the big things Elon did with SpaceX to reduce costs was to move away from cost-plus contracts to competitive contracts. I think that can be done by the executive branch. They can lay off people, downsize, and switch to competitive contracts. Is that going to balance the budget? Not alone.
I’m for getting rid of all this waste. When the federal and state governments cut welfare, aid, and food stamps, the states need to take on more responsibility. Because the Federal Reserve and our debt are financing the federal portion, states will have to become more fiscally responsible. They’ll either need to raise taxes to fund benefits or be more conservative about who qualifies.
To be clear, I’m for looking at entitlements, waste—everything—because it’s such an enormous problem. If you put the military off the table and entitlements off the table, you’re left with only 16% of the budget. Even if you eliminate that, you don’t get anywhere close to balancing the budget. So, while I’m for eliminating waste, I’m also for reviewing all spending.
LAURA INGRAHAM: The Pentagon, which I mentioned, has so much waste and so many duplicative initiatives inside the Defense Department. They fail the audits year after year. Have you been on top of this? Republicans, frankly, have been rubber-stamping the Pentagon budget for decades. That has to change.
SEN. RAND PAUL: It's worse than that, Laura. Right now, the first budget reconciliation that the Republicans are proposing is to bust the Pentagon caps. We have military spending caps, but spending is still going upwards. All the old guardrails in the Senate—you know who they are—are going to bust the military caps with their first budget reconciliation. Same as the first budget."
"SEN. RAND PAUL: One of the big things Elon did with SpaceX to reduce costs was to move away from cost-plus contracts to competitive contracts. I think that can be done by the executive branch. They can lay off people, downsize, and switch to competitive contracts. Is that going to balance the budget? Not alone.
I’m for getting rid of all this waste. When the federal and state governments cut welfare, aid, and food stamps, the states need to take on more responsibility. Because the Federal Reserve and our debt are financing the federal portion, states will have to become more fiscally responsible. They’ll either need to raise taxes to fund benefits or be more conservative about who qualifies.
To be clear, I’m for looking at entitlements, waste—everything—because it’s such an enormous problem. If you put the military off the table and entitlements off the table, you’re left with only 16% of the budget. Even if you eliminate that, you don’t get anywhere close to balancing the budget. So, while I’m for eliminating waste, I’m also for reviewing all spending.
LAURA INGRAHAM: The Pentagon, which I mentioned, has so much waste and so many duplicative initiatives inside the Defense Department. They fail the audits year after year. Have you been on top of this? Republicans, frankly, have been rubber-stamping the Pentagon budget for decades. That has to change.
SEN. RAND PAUL: It's worse than that, Laura. Right now, the first budget reconciliation that the Republicans are proposing is to bust the Pentagon caps. We have military spending caps, but spending is still going upwards. All the old guardrails in the Senate—you know who they are—are going to bust the military caps with their first budget reconciliation. Same as the first budget."
..you can’t balance a budget by making people go back to work, but you certainly can start.
Yes, it creates a momentum in the right direction.
Pentagon. Not the only megalith to fail routine audits. eg the EU. That is no excuse, audits are important. Repeated failure is a signal of deep malaise. One solution is to split it into smaller units that could be wrong organizationally but it is a necessary medicine.