Thanks; I would have liked a question about how generous we can be when we're having to severely cut federal government welfare spending domestically due to excessive deficit spending in the past. My understanding is that DOGE went after USAID first because it was a no-brainer to cut, now that we are in this crisis of government funding. Even if the Democrats regain power, I don't see them resurrecting USAID.
I feel like the whole episode can be boiled down to, “If citizens don’t believe that government is meeting their needs, they won’t care very much how useful spending on other countries is” conditional on them getting power. There’s some larger question around how much any one president should be able to unilaterally shift American priorities, but that’s the constitutional crisis territory he mentioned.
I was also surprised he thought of accountability and impact as two separate questions. He made the point analyzing impact is useless without auditing if the thing actually happened. Yet it sounds like they didn’t necessarily? He made it sound like it was two separate, disconnected work streams.
Thank you for this. We desperately need more discussion of this issue. I recently framed it as a necessary activity for America as the return on investment is so high. Here’s me take: https://shalyn8.substack.com/p/4-reasons-destroying-foreign-aid
Thanks; I would have liked a question about how generous we can be when we're having to severely cut federal government welfare spending domestically due to excessive deficit spending in the past. My understanding is that DOGE went after USAID first because it was a no-brainer to cut, now that we are in this crisis of government funding. Even if the Democrats regain power, I don't see them resurrecting USAID.
I feel like the whole episode can be boiled down to, “If citizens don’t believe that government is meeting their needs, they won’t care very much how useful spending on other countries is” conditional on them getting power. There’s some larger question around how much any one president should be able to unilaterally shift American priorities, but that’s the constitutional crisis territory he mentioned.
I was also surprised he thought of accountability and impact as two separate questions. He made the point analyzing impact is useless without auditing if the thing actually happened. Yet it sounds like they didn’t necessarily? He made it sound like it was two separate, disconnected work streams.