Elon Musk has been blathering lately about cutting all spending for unauthorized federal programs. At first glance, that sounds great. Why are we spending money on unauthorized programs, anyway? How can that even happen?
The answer is a little hazy, but it boils down to this: Constitutionally, Congress doesn't need to "authorize" anything. All they have to do is appropriate. However, House rules require an authorization to be passed before any money can be appropriated for a program. This rule is generally followed for initial appropriations, but lots of laws are written with specific authorized amounts for their first few years and are never updated afterward even though Congress goes on merrily appropriating money. According to the Congressional Budget Office, there are 1,515 unauthorized programs currently being funded. Here's how they break down:
As you can see, the earliest one dates to 1980 (!). In 1975 Congress passed enabling legislation that created the Legal Services Corporation to provide legal aid to poor people. The bill authorized sums for 1975 through 1980, but since then nobody has ever bothered reauthorizing it. In FY24 it was appropriated $560 million.
I know this because CBO tracks it all in a state-of-the-art Excel spreadsheet as required by law. Congress, you see, is very concerned to keep count of all these programs even though they never get around to doing anything about them. Here are the biggest of the programs:
In theory, unauthorized spending can be stopped in its tracks very simply: any member of the House can raise a point of order against an unauthorized appropriation. However, this tactic can be closed off under suspension of the rules or under the terms of a special rule.
The bottom line is that this is not some weird form of Deep State corruption discovered by Elon Musk. Congress is well aware of it, and apparently there are norms of some kind that allow it to continue. I don't really understand that part, though. In any case, "unauthorized" spending isn't illegal in any sense. It's all normal, legit spending approved by majority vote under rules or norms that Congress can change anytime it wants. It can't be cut by executive order and there's no special reason to target it compared to any other spending.
Veterans' health care is the obvious low-hanging fruit, so Musk and Ramaswamy might as well start there. The impact will be felt by Patriotic Heroes who won't flinch from making sacrifices again in the national interest.
Current unauthorized spending = $250 B
Over a ten year budget window that's $2.5 T
Job complete! Moving on!
you can multiply? good for you?
the federal budget is $6.1 trillion. $250 billion is 4%. except for veterans healthcare, the other programs here are couch cushion money. congress ignores this because there are better ways to spend their time.
He's being facetious and saying that Elon and Felon will say that when Elon bullshitted his "we can cut $2T from the federal budget" answer, he didn't mean per year like he clearly did (and stupidly), but that he meant by the 10-year window that people (stupidly) insist on (I blame the media, it feels like their fault). And then they'll say they didn't just cut $2T, they cut $2.5T!
JOB COMPLETE!
I'm sorry that I had to explain the joke but I felt compelled because you got Poe'd.
Many thanks.
"the 10-year window that people (stupidly) insist on"
It *is* kinda dumb, but if I understand this right, the 10-year figure is used so often because that's the period Congress specifies for budget projections that estimate the effects of changes (I believe it's the period CBO has to use). It's the reason why the 2017 trump tax cuts expire after 9 years-- the projections had to have taxes revert to prior levels in the 10th year in order to make things come out where they wanted.
This is a good example of how simplistic, right-wing thought has taken over much of social media (and AM radio, and Cable TV, and). "Unauthorized" spending? Hundreds of billions every year? sounds bad! Government spending is out of control.
But to explain the actual situation, we need a several paragraphs long article, with a couple of charts for good measure, on a blog in the corner of the internet. That's just too much for most people (especially when the simple explanation confirms their preconceptions), so Musk, et al can continue to hoodwink/scam/hold in contempt the general public.
That’s fine. Let Musk and Vivek get rid of it. As Ken Lovell above points out, I’m sure veterans and the people that love them will fully understand that they’ve been sucking off the federal teat for far too long, and will walk away quietly without creating any big media ruckus.
Just like how Musk and Vivek won’t notice at all in their private jets if the $7b of unauthorized spending over at the FAA vanishes.
This is what voters voted for. Give it to them good and hard.
Agree, although Muskivek has no power to actually do anything.
I'm also hoping that Donald manages to impose all the tariffs he said he would over and over, resulting in prices at Walmart going up 20 or 30 percent. But as we know from the last time the relationship between what he campaigns on and what actually happens is not exactly 1:1.
Damn! And there I was waiting with bated breath for Trump to end the income tax on my Social Security.
"Bated"!
Congratulations to you!
I've always liked "baited breath." It sounds so fishy.
Urgh, lawyers. Any normal person would think that appropriated = authorized, but the lawyers had to come up with a wacky distinction that makes perfectly lawful spending sound unlawful to an untrained ear.
It all stems from the 1974 Budget Control and Impoundment Act. This was passed by Congress to reign in Nixon who was playing fun and games with appropriated funds by refusing to allocate them as a means of shutting down programs he did not like. The current GOP wants to get this act declared unconstitutional so they can return to the era of impoundment of funds to act as a defacto line item veto.
Yeah, but it ain't the lawyers-- it's the damnable demagogues who deliberately take a term that has a technical meaning and lift it out of context to make it sound like something completely illegitimate.
This is a Frank Luntz kind of tactic that Republicans have honed to a fine edge over several decades. It works because almost nobody understands the technical context within which these terms function, and explaining that context sounds like backfilling ratiocination that makes the explainer look weak and befuddled and corrupt. It's all of a piece with the way Republicans want to say that the supposed "common sense" or literal naive reading of terms is the only way to understand them. It's deliberate obfuscation.
I wish Dems not only understood just how deeply the Rs work at manipulating language and archetypal images, but could figure out their own effective countervailing ones. This isn't something they can rely on the press for, nor on slice-and-dice polling. We have our own academics who can be pretty good with this kind of stuff, actually, but their work isn't much in evidence among Ds. OTOH Rs complain endlessly about how Ds tyrannize through labeling, but you know how it works with them-- every accusation is a confession.
It can't be cut by executive order and there's no special reason to target it compared to any other spending.
I just hope the Supreme Court agrees with Kevin‘s measured, optimistic interpretation of all this, if push comes to shove, and Elon and Vivek start slashing vital programs based on their crank interpretation of the rules.
Elon and Vivek can't slash shit. They can point to stuff and yell and scream about it, but ultimately the House controls the purse strings and if they want to let this stuff ride, they'll let it ride. I presume, though, that perennial targets like Head Start, Child Care, and now the NOAA will definitely be in the cross-hairs, but also doubt even the thoroughly MAGA-fied House caucus could muster the votes to zero those out. They're popular programs.
Congress controls the purse strings, not the house.
They are gunning for the 1974 Budget Control and Impoundment Act. It's all in Project 2025 - the GOP wants to kill that law and enable the president to kill programs by not allocating funding to the programs when Congress appropriates funds for them.
Ah, the good old times, when each branch of the government would defend its prerogative. Now, the Republican Congress just wants to be the Duma to the wannabe President-for-Life.
Democrats should weaponize the budget the way the Republicans do, and make the R's spend time having to explain unauthorized programs they want to keep.
Perhaps one of the new requirements for vetting Presidential appointees would be a passing grade on the naturalization test I took back in 1976.
https://civicsquestions.com/all/
Got 98 out of 100, I'm ashamed to say.
98 is pretty good. The average American wouldn't make room temperature on a test like this.
I'm glad I didn't have to name my House rep and senator for 1976. That would be tough. Sen. Butler was my answer for senator, but then I had a doubt. It was right after all. Sen. Schiff will be a correct answer starting Monday.
100
I'm sure Elon will be eager to cut the funding going to NASA.
I view DOGE as a political, versus economic, project. Trump, Musk et all want headlines with '$100 million saved.' Marry the aforementioned with GOP policy preferences, and items such as Head Start, NOAA and Foreign Relations appear to be likely targets.
I can't believe we're having a so-called serious discussion about DOGE cutting all the waste in government. Hundreds of billions! ... trillions! ... they say.
Government spending is the bête noire of some groups on the far-right like Heritage, which wrote Project 2025. But cuts cannot be enacted by Heritage or even Elon and Vivek. Cuts can only happen if Republican politicians in Congress pass legislation that then is signed by a Republican president. That is something that Republicans do not do. If a Democrat were in the White House, it would be a different story.
Republican presidents like Reagan and the Bushes grew government spending because government spending is good for the economy. Cut government spending and you cut economic growth. Cut it by a trillion or two trillion and you put the economy in recession, or worse.
Trump is a dumbass and doesn't care who gets hurt but he knows a bad economy will tank stocks and that's not what he wants.
DOGE will make recommendations for cuts and 99% of them will not happen. If anything happens, it will be a rollback of regulations, along with more contracts for Elon and more outsourcing.
In four years, government spending will be higher and the federal deficit will be much higher. Count on it.
Another thing that will happen is that some on the left will debase themselves. Already, Mo Khanna is tweeting "I'm ready to work with @doge ... to cut waste."
Mr. & Mrs. Ezra Klein, meanwhile, are on board with the agenda of the new sheriffs in town. Klein seems giddy at times talking about the possibilities. Annie Lowery at the Atlantic has the headline of the year: "The American People Deserve DOGE." Gimme a break.
You knew they would be before they emitted one word.
Reagan's deficits earned him the ironic title "greatest Keynesian of them all" back in the day-- at least from me. It wasn't a compliment.
Khanna's rush to hop on the doge train was, well, at least undignified if not outright servile. OTOH his district includes Silicon Valley so he's kind of playing to the home crowd and probably doesn't want to get too crosswise with these two spiteful clowns in particular. I think he'd have served himself and his district better by keeping his distance, but then I don't live there so what do I know.
You actually think Elon Musk understands any of that?