Apparently, although Musk’s status as a “special government employee” limits him to working no more than 130 out of every 365 days, they are internally claiming that Musk only works 1 day per week.
Therefore, Musk is allowed to work for 130 of every 52 weeks, meaning he can work indefinitely as a special government employee.
It might be true if you consider how many times he tweets per day.
I get that halting financial aid can have devastating consequences for many nations. But still, the question is, why should the US be the ones funding it? The US is running a huge deficit. It can’t afford to pay for all the programs for its own citizens. So why should it be funding things for other nations? It falls on the leadership of those countries to provide for their people.
There is an intermediate question.
Let’s suppose the US should not fund it. That does not mean it is not wrong to cut off the funding essentially overnight.
I’ll use medicaid as an analogy. Perhaps we spend too much on medicaid. Even if that is true, we need to give people a year or so to figure something else out. Medicaid cards should not suddenly stop working one day (as apparently happened to the medicaid web sites for one day in February.)
I’d say there’s a difference between the two. If it’s a service to American citizens, then I agree, because the government has a responsibility to take care of its own people.
For people outside the US, there is no responsibility at all.
ok
I would mention that US foreign aid as a percentage of GDP is low relative to other rich nations.
There are substantial indirect benefits to American citizens. However, if you prefer to cede all the soft power benefits to China, that’s what the US will get.
It is probably a service to American citizens to ensure that certain diseases like Ebola and tuberculosis remain under control. These diseases could spread to US citizens.
I’m not saying I would defund this stuff, but a lot of this money goes to Africa. What are the tangible benefits of soft power the US has received so far?
If foreign aid is something that the US no longer wishes to fund, then Congress should eliminate those programs. These programs have been funded by Congress. If we say that the President can unilaterally eliminate any government departments or payments he wants to on a whim, it sets him up as a monarch.
This has nothing to do with the deficit. The GOP is proposing massive tax cuts blowing up the deficit. It’s getting much worse, not better, and USAID is a rounding error.
I think we get a huge bang for our buck with the foreign aid we have supplied, both in terms of lives saved and US soft power around the globe. However if Congress doesn’t see it that way they have the power of the purse.
US foreign aid is 0.22% of GDP.
I think that once you promise to give that aid, then you create a moral obligation even if there was not one before.
Additionally, to treat people with such callous indifference undermines the underlying claim to legitimacy of the united states, namely that it respects the equal moral worth of every individual person. This is not a case of whether we need to, say, bomb nazi munitions even if it means killing civilians. This is cutting off aid to people in desperate need without even bothering to give them time to figure something else out, simply because we have the power to do so.
Here is a military commander on the benefits of aid, you would hear similar opinions from pandemic experts relating to their field of expertise:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/27/britain-armed-forces-cut-aid-fund-defence
Plus it’s just bogus to justify there being no responsibility outside the US when we’ve seen a denying of responsibility within the US. Deny responsibility for crimes, deny responsibility for healthcare, deny responsibility for education, etc, etc, etc.
Absolutely! Congress ceding this much power is the problem here.
Can these guys hire an accountant or something? Someone who can do math, and maybe possess a working level of SME?
I’ve been seeing some discussion about the effects of DOGE on various science programs. They’re saving a bit of money on salaries and costing millions of dollars on wasted reagents, population lines, lost data, and projects killed off mid-way through resulting in a ton of wasted resources. Randomly shutting down programs, suddenly is not an effective path to improved efficiency.
