But they're still wastes of money, and based on the one-line description provided by the OP, they are rather absurd.

A few others I can think of:

  Government insurance/funding for homes destroyed by natural disasters - why am I bailing out Florida homeowners when their home is destroyed by a hurricane? At best you get the first one free and then you're on your own after that.

  Billions for highway construction that is not needed, which then costs more to maintain and results in more spending on cars, more deaths, higher costs for insurance, &c.

  Various improper payments, billions in subsidies handed out, COVID-19 bailouts and forgiveness

The broad point wasn't wrong. The government does waste money and frankly is pretty damn well-funded.

▲ 8note 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think it would be more wasteful overall to not give that bailout to florida home owners. A walking migrant crisis and maintaining the refugee camps for impovrished floridians after a hurricane sounds extremely expensive for a long time.

	▲	ericmay 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sounds like an excuse for anyone to justify their spending, ergo American debt-to-GDP ratio continues to increase

▲ dahart 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The broad point above by @bilsbie is wrong. Fake made up items completely undermine the point’s credibility, and science spending in the U.S. provides a return on investment, it’s not losing money. That is pure political propaganda and not truth. Your new items have a touch more validity than top comment, but you’re making vast assumptions and stating opinions not shared by all, and not accounting for the economic costs of the alternatives you’re suggesting.

▲

ericmay 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Sorry, I don't agree with you at all and continuing to argue about it just makes me more convinced the OP was right to point out those specific items. I'm not interested in complaints about the GDP to debt ratio being too high if when someone points out wasteful expense, regardless of how minor, they and others are met with derision and arguments. At that point yea spend whatever who cares about the debt?

	▲	SoftTalker 17 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The point is that you could cut all those "wasteful" projects (and we probably should, just on priciple) but if the savings is millions or even a few billion you aren't even making a dent. The real money is entitlements and defense (and interest on the debt). That's where you have to look to make a difference, but one of those things is mandatory and the other two are basically untouchable.

▲ 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

▲ quickthrowman 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Name a huge organization that doesn’t waste money. I’ll give you as much time as you need.

▲

ericmay 11 hours ago | parent [-]

"All organizations waste money, therefore organizations should keep wasting money and it's actually fine" doesn't sound very compelling to me.

▲

8note 10 hours ago | parent [-]

the talk of waste is in service of thw question "is the government well funded enough?"

and so far it does not appear that reducing waste would properly fund the government? a couple patriot missiles worth is not the debt, and would not allow for much more efficient single payer health care - the single biggest opportunity the US government has to reduce waste in american society

▲

ericmay 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Again you can do both - you can cut these wasteful programs, you can have a well-funded government that's already well-funded with trillions of dollars, and then also reform healthcare all without raising taxes. Use your imagination.

▲

ben_w 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

My imagination is indeed very capable of magical thinking.

However, if this was something that worked in the real world, we wouldn't be having this conversation because e.g. DOGE would have been successful.

▲

quickthrowman 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That sounds nice in a perfectly spherical world but we live in reality.

Getting bogged down in line item spending is a trick politicians use to divide us. Net discretionary spending is only 27% of the budget, social security, Medicare, and military spending make up the other 73%. If you eliminated all discretionary spending, we’d still be running a budget deficit.

	▲	ericmay 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Getting bogged down in line item spending is a trick politicians use to divide us. Politicians? You're sitting here arguing about the line item spending instead of just admitting we should cut obviously bad spending. That's the division that's taking place and it's happening right here in this thread and it's your doing! lol