Not entirely sure what granularity below $1 provides anymore. Other than maybe trying to fool us that something that is effectively $2 appears to be $1 plus a tiny fraction less than $1.

When we were in Spain for a camino, croquettes were the single biggest food revelation I'd had in years... like how are these absolutely amazing and diverse food stuffs not simply ubiquitous? Those and tortilla.

No, not only does it fund USAID, it directly funds NGO Programs like the Global Fund ($2B, p.2639) - which is the primary mover for PEPFAR... And that's just one of many other specified appropriations. See the thread above with link to the appropriations bill.

Even among 'discretionary' funding, the appropriations process is a blend of directed, specific, and discretionary funding.

A better example of what you are talking about would be the NIH (page 1837) which basically allocates block grants for the institution to then grant to other entities pursuant to their main charter. The executive could, in cases like these, review the grant process and make changes to the selection process -- as long as it's consistent with the primary charter. for example:

NATIONAL HEART, LUNG, AND BLOOD INSTITUTE
For carrying out section 301 and title IV of the PHS Act with respect to cardiovascular, lung, and blood diseases, and blood and
blood products, $3,982,345,000.

Fine with me to review the Grant process to make sure that the $3.9B is being allocated to the best blood disease science; any time you've got an institution disbursing $3.9B annually, there are going to be some questionable and potentially 'soft' grants to allies; but that's just the margins of what's basically $3.9B in grants to study blood diseases.

If the Executive wants to change priorities at a macro and not micro grant level, it needs to get it's budget passed so the appropriations match the intentions.

Have to start with 'Mere Solidarity' before we can work ourselves up to 'Solidarity'

But in all honesty, it's difficult to even get to 'Mere Solidarity' in America... and Bernie's message of 'fighting for someone else as much as you'd fight for yourself' begs the question, which fight?

I suspect Solidarity plus Subsidiarity tied to the American premise of 'The Great Truce' could provide a modum vivendi -- but only if Solidarity means a lot of people living their lives the wrong way. The difference between this and pure (Libertarian) Atomized Individualism is subtle, but real. But I don't think we're anywhere near unpacking those distinctions. I say this as someone who's trying to improve an actual American Solidarity Party approach to Solidarity and Subsidiarity... it's hard.

Thanks, appreciate the link, I hate it when work gets in the way of the internet.

I'm not arguing against the system, itself... I'm pointing out that the system works in these ways. Appropriations are a combination of specific direction and discretionary deployments.

PEPFAR (since it's in the news) is a good example where the Funds are appropriated to the President further directed to go through State, but to a specific multilateral global fund and thereafter as determined by the fund. PEPFAR isn't specified.

PEPFAR is a distillation of concepts that only exist contingently depending upon continued funding resolutions. And that's ok... my point is that the entire edifice is impossibly complex.

https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/fact-sheet/the-u-s-presidents-emergency-plan-for-aids-relief-pepfar/

But yes, I agree that for this funding cycle, that's how the funds are appropriated.

Right. The secondary question is how quickly can a *possible* signal correction create an incentive structure for [new] organizations to deliver?

Yes, but that's not what I'm pointing out.

Every year there's a funding/grant review process... that's what you take over, and you route the funding to programs that are better aligned for US Soft-power / International aid than some other programs.

I think it's a bit of a smokescreen to follow Musk's tweets as policy -- he hasn't 'deleted' anything because he can't.

Now, having some set of programs ID'd for non-renewal or re-bid, etc? That's actually legit.

With the caveat that some programs within agencies eventually get direct funding from Congress. And, let's say you didn't like how, say, PEPFAR was working, you'd have to find a competing NGO to deliver the $1.2B (I think) program.

So, it's not quite call up March and give him the $B program to figure out... but you could open solicit bids for the $B programs.

...and then you have to go back to GSA and make sure that the bidding process and requirements are aligned, etc.

Which is just to say, that IF the goal is to do things that have evolved into DEM coded projects and do them as R coded projects... well, you can - but it'll take a few years. Do I think Trump has a plan to do this? No I don't. But if you don't have a plan to do this, I don't think your ad hoc plans will make it past the courts.

Honestly, this is (possibly) an interesting 'coalition' issue... Team Grey Republitarians assume the goal is to kill the depts... but I'm seeing open challenges not to kill the agencies, but to use the funds for good (tm).

I'm not entirely sure if that's the goal.

I was trying to research how exactly Congress funds USAID... remember a lot of Congressional funding is for what we might say a Mission tied to a Dept... some of that is very specific in that it is for a submitted and approved budget. But, some depts get something like a Block Grant that they then distribute according to the mission and their internal vetting criteria -- NIH is a good example of this. Congress didn't fund EcoHealth Alliance, it funded NIH for various mission defined projects and NIH solicited grants and EHA's grant was funded.

It *might* be the goal to simply end USAID... but it could also be the goal to scrutinize all the aid and then decide to fund other projects with those funds.

It depends on how the USAID appropriation is set-up as to how specific those things are... So, we've also heard that State is going to take over the disbursement of appropriated funds and the USAID dept would be disbanded.

As I mention above, it depends on how it's all structured, but it's not impossible that USAID remains and its future grants are routed elsewhere, or, if legal, it's disbanded and the funding goes, say, to State where it is disbursed.

One thing that I was able to confirm doing initial research is that 80% of all funding goes through 75 large 'partners' as is typical. Here's a really poorly formatted chart of 2024 and 2023 funding categories.

2024 / 2023
Grants to PIOs $7.93 billion $7.20 billion
Direct Payments to Ukraine 4.22 / 14.80
Grants/CAs to NGOs 7.18 / 8.76
Contracts and IDVs 7.27 / 6.80
Other Financial Assistance 1.70 / 0.64
Total $28.30 billion / $38.20 billion

Still, for clarity, my personal political philosophy is that you have to work within the legal framework to change where the funding goes or how it's managed... but nothing at USAID should be considered 'required' funding... there's simply projects we want to fund and projects we don't -- if Congress doesn't specify what exactly is funded, then the Agency sets criteria and funds whatever it wants as long as it plausibly meets the mission.

I think this is itself an interesting question.

What *is* winning?

It isn't Deficit Reduction.

The hypothesis I'd throw out is this:

The long march through the institutions was, in fact, very successful; but in the end, TOO successful. Think about it this way, as long as each team could fund various pet projects, there's little incentive to audit too closely... as long as there's a Rodeo Clown Training Pipeline being funded for every Anti-Racist Baby Seminar there's some sense of shared ownership. In this sense, the Trump Populist review is an outsider's review of people not on the spigot. I mean, it's pretty obviously a bad use of funds to create an artificial category of Rodeo Clown.

Right, if things go 'well' they will be shielded from any future prosecution.

If things go sideways, Trump will hang them out to dry.

The 20-something will eat it; Musk might eat it, but has various ways to deflect.

Either way, it's a really really bad bet for the kids.

I think the Schelling point is an interesting idea, but doesn't it behave differently depending on who's doing what? It's essentially a coordination problem, no?

In one case the lack of a Schelling point allows for coalition building, but hinders the coalition from actually prioritizing marginal gains... or put another way, it's your old favorite of crab-bucketing on the entire prioritization project -- which never ends. So, in terms of 'going on the offensive' the Omnicause can't really because no-one ever goes to the right rallying point -- or, another way to put it is everyone believes *they* are at the right rallying point but everyone else is at various wrong ones.

I think I see your point that Trump is exploiting the Schelling point coordination problem of Team Blue; BUT, I'm not entirely sure that that's only what's happening. Put another way, it's not simply a coordination problem, but more of a bandwidth overload problem -- more like obscuring chaff. Chaff is difficult to deal with even if you have a singular mission of blowing up the airplane.

I think it get's exacerbated by Unreliable Narrators who can't (or don't want to) separate the chaff from the plane... but there's just an awful lot of chaff.

Seems hard to believe, I'm pretty sure the President declared it the law of the land.

Exactly!

...with a twist you will probably find cringe.

I have only imbibed Conclave indirectly via friends/family who have seen it. The universal approval was Costumes! Location! Ralph Fiennes (plus Italian)!

As to Good? Well, you don't have to be Good to win an Oscar or secure a prediction. :-)

But, most felt 'disappointed' by the Twist and opined that a) a murder mystery or b) straight political drama would've been better.

Both liberal and conservative Catholics felt that the Conservative catholics weren't properly crafted foils... but the liberals were ok with it and the cons felt is soured what could've been a better movie. Kinda like a Sorkin loop.

I'll wait until it cycles through HBO... meanwhile will re-watch Young Pope for Costumes! Location! Villains! Jude Law! TrenEdgy!

Here's my *guess* at how they might reframe it.

US becomes a third-party (perhaps with other parties) guarantor of a 'population exchange' plan where the US commits XX(X) $Bs for relocation, resettlement and rebuild. Gaza become a multi-party re-development zone with, say, Saudis, Qatar, Egypt, etc.

Evan that would be a WTF proposal - especially if you announced it without the Saudis, Qatari, Egyptians, etc. already on-board -- which they aren't.

So, yeah, interesting to see how this morphs.

Possibly we frame it as the Steel Dock recovery act... and just never leave. :-)

Yeah, I haven't seen any yet.

Funniest I saw was John Podheretz owning the maximalist Neo-Con a**hole blogger mantle saying, 'WTF'

I mean, you can steelman Tariffs and argue whether he's using his threat to get real or fake concessions... but so far I haven't seen anyone steelman the fallback position...

... just pictures of Suzie Wiles losing her mind.

But, I'm sure there are people working on retconning a plan as we speak.

Yeah, imagine what a stupid fundamentalist rube you'd have to be to follow a leader who could read the sands of the future.

Lindsey Graham: "erm"

Boy is Puerto Rico gonna be pissed when we make Gaza a state.

RUBIO: OK, uhh well what we'll do, I'll run in first, uh gather up all the eggs, we can kinda just, ya know blast them all down with AOE. Um, I will use Intimidating Shout, to kinda scatter'em, so we don't have to fight a whole bunch of them at once. Uhh, when my Shouts are done, uhh, I'll need Anfrony to come in and drop his Shout too, uh so we can keep them scattered and not have to fight too many. Um, when his is done, Bass of course will need to run in and do the same thing. Uhh, we're gonna need Divine Intervention on our mages, uhh so they can, uhh, AE, uh so we can of course get them down fast, cause we're bringing all these guys, I mean, we'll be in trouble if we don't take them down quick. Uhh I think this is a pretty good plan, we should be able to pull it off this time. Uhh, what do you think Ratcliffe? Can you give me a number crunch real quick?

RATCLIFFE: Uhhh.. yeah gimme a sec... I'm coming up with thirty-two point three three, repeating of course, percentage, of survival.

NOEM: That's a lot better than we usually do, uhh, alright, you think we're ready guys? [interrupted]

TRUMP: All right chums, I'm (back)! Let's do this! LEEROOOOOOOY JEEENKIIIIIINSSS!!! [runs into Gaza]

-Short pause-

HEGSETH: [incredulous] ... Oh my God he just ran in. [runs in]

USAID: Some of our best CIA assets are sex tourists.

It'll be Conclave... Costumes! Location! Villains! Ralph Fiennes! TrendEdgy! No Risk!

Heh... one of the things that provides a little cognitive dissonance for those of us old enough to remember is the Left white-knighting the CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, FBI, DoD, Treasury, etc.

I mean, does no one respect the old ways?

That isn't the check on the Executive. DA's aren't the check on the Executive exercising (questionable) authority over the Executive branch.

If he's overstepping power reserved to Congress... SCOTUS can and will rule such. That's still not an indictable offence. Think about it... we don't put in jail every administration that had an Executive order or action stopped by the Courts.

If SCOTUS rules against his Executive Actions *and* he ignores SCOTUS *and* isn't impeached... that's an actual Constitutional crisis.

...but still not resolvable by a DA or an indictment.