[paulproteus]

Gotcha. The reason I was mystified is that the budget is written by Congress, so I would guess a phone call to a leader in Congress with a desired budget number would do the job. Given that this doesn't seem to be the plan, I couldn't tell if maybe they had some other goal. I hope that explains how someone could be mystified.

[adastra22]

It is not the budget that is the issue to them, except maybe in the total size. I'm sure they think it can be done cheaper. Rather it is how the money is spent that they are looking at. That's within the executive branch's authority, not Congress.

[ModernMech]

No, you are absolutely wrong about that. The whole point of the Revolutionary War was we didn't want an executive who decided how to spend our tax money.

Congress doesn't just give the executive branch a slush fund they can use to implement whatever political agenda the administration has. The money is for specific things, and the president has to spend it on them. He also can't just not spend it. His just is to make the money go from A to B, not to decide whether or not it gets to B.

Yes, the executive can set a policy agenda, and they have powers within the executive branch to administer the agencies, but one of those power is not the ability to spend or hold up congressionally appointed funds. The president's job is to spend that money on our priorities, not his. Many times his priorities will align with the voters, but at the end of the day he is the president for everyone, not just Republicans. This is the whole system of representation we have been living under for 200+ years.

We pay those taxes, we vote for our representatives, they allocate spending, the president makes sure the funds are lawfully spent. That is the system. You seem to be suggesting some other system where the president gets to decide how the money is spent. That's not how the system works.

[adastra22]

Have you worked in government? I have. I helped manage a program that was an actual line item on the national budget. I'm quite familiar with how it works.

There is a lot of executive leeway in interpreting how to spend money allocated in congressional authorizations. As I said, I was managing a program that was in the 10's of millions of dollars and a line item on my agency's budget. The actual wording of the authorization was quite short, and there was a lot of executive agency in deciding how to structure it.

But most of your comment doesn't seem to be addressing what my comment was saying, and is politically charged enough that I don't think it would be fruitful for us to continue this conversation. I wish you the best.

[ModernMech]

As an employee of the government responsible for these items, you are beholden to follow the law. If you break the law you are prosecuted. You have to go through background checks, get training on what you're legally allowed to do, receive training for security clearances and how to handle sensitive data, go through that whole vetting process. You must preserve documents, be free of conflicts of interest, your work is auditable, and your department must respond to FOIA requests. The bar is high for you because the public puts our trust in you to spend our money.

None of this is true for Musk. He's not treating any of this with care, and we can see this in real time as USAID food/medicine is held up and rotting at borders. How is that not wasteful?

If you were to make those kind of capricious decisions as a government employee leading to people going hungry and staying sick or worse dying... Congress would rightfully be demanding answers and your resignation.

I think it should be obvious to everyone we are not dealing with an instance of a regular employee exercising routine and precedented discretion here, when Congress is up in arms, agency employees are up in arms, class action lawsuits are being filed. How often does a response of this scale happen when you make a decision?