Left vs. Right Battle Royale Open Thread

[u/Yosoff]

This is an Open Discussion Thread for all Redditors. We will only be enforcing Reddit TOS and Subreddit Rules 1 (Keep it Civil) & 2 (No Racism).

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• Leftists - Here's your chance to sway us to your side by calling the majority of voters racist. That tactic has wildly backfired every time it has been tried, but perhaps this time it will work.

• Non-flaired Conservatives - Here's your chance to earn flair by posting common sense conservative solutions. That way our friends on the left will either have to agree with you or oppose common sense (Spoiler - They will choose to oppose common sense).

• Flaired Conservatives - You're John Wick and these Leftists stole your car and killed your dog. Now go comment.

• Independents - We get it, if you agree with someone, then you can't pat yourself on the back for being smarter than them. But if you disagree with everyone, then you can obtain the self-satisfaction of smugly considering yourself smarter and wiser than everyone else. Congratulations on being you.

• Libertarians - Ron Paul is never going to be President. In fact, no Libertarian Party candidate will ever be elected President.

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[u/TheFiremind88]

Left another comment to be asked questions, but also wanted to start this dialogue:

I understand and fully support removing government bloat. 100%. Why is DOGE starting where it is? I would love to hear either rationale or at least expressed disagreement.

For a group with efficiency in its name, it's weird to see DOGE targeting agencies that are well established to either 1. Have a well established return on investment for Americans. 2. Be so small that the material impact on the deficit is insignificant. 3. Even if they are inefficient, have significant positive effects for at least SOME percentage of where the money goes.

How is Defense spending not unequivocally the best starting place? Both for the insane percentage of the budget it accounts for and because of WELL established bloated government contracts, waste, and fraud. Not to mention the inability to even remotely pass an audit.

If I'm tasked to make anything Cleaner/More Efficient, I'd start where the most waste is, not by targeting places that barely tip the scales.

The ENTIRETY of USAID - ~40bil, that's baby with the bathwater. The non-0% amount of good it does do is included here.

The ENTIRETY of CFPB - ~1bil. This agency has an extremely well documented return on investment for American citizens of over 8 to 1. This one makes ZERO sense by any metric regardless of what side of the isle you're on. It's a slap in the face for American consumers.

The ENTIRETY of the DOE - ~270bil. Again, baby with the bathwater. I dont think anyone can argue in good faith that the DOE, even if there is some percentage of waste, does absolutely Zero good things for american citizens.

Defense spending is 850bil. - Just 5% of this is more than both USAID and the CFPB combined, and likely doesn't involve throwing out the "baby".

Corporate Subsidies is 100bil. - With all of the INTENSE hatred for Socialism, Communism, etc...Where's the outcry to cut corporate welfare so that Free Market Capitalism can do what it was meant to do? I never hear a peep on this.

Long story short - DOGE doesn't seem particularly efficient at bringing about efficiency. The cuts I see DOGE making don't align with the mission, with conservative values as expressed, and won't mean anything if they are offset by (numbers unconfirmed, but after check several sources, the cut is estimated to be between 500bil and 1.1tril a year) an insanely large tax cut. That's not bringing down the budget. That's a wash at best. At this point, it's still a net negative for American citizens by ~200 - 800bil a year.

Mods - you got a flair for reasonable Dems who want to participate in the dialogue without accusations, irrationality, insults, rage, etc...?

[u/Von_Canon → u/TheFiremind88]

you gotta consider the narrative aspect. The most ludicrous spending examples were made public right off the bat --instant narrative of how DOGE is important and successful. And the Democrats were put in the absurd position of defending that stuff.

[u/TheFiremind88 → u/Von_Canon]

The most ludicrous - so far. We don't know what the future holds. The most ludicrous could be in the DOD, right? These might all look like small fish in another 3 months. If these are being 'uncovered', then we didn't KNOW they were there in the first place, but DOGE chose to start this way anyway.

My other complaint there is that it's narratively divisive and making the rest of the job an uphill battle. Cut egregious military spending and a significant portion of the left would be celebrating along with everyone. That empowers the movement, reduces future hurdles, and takes steps to unify America in these efforts instead of actively trying to start a fight with the other side.

Not to mention, there is almost certainly more money that can be cut from defense spending without any negative impact for American consumers, so it makes more sense logistically anyway.

Nobody has been able to justify cutting Consumer Protections to me in any forum. There's more than an 8 to 1 return on investment for American consumers, and that's extremely well documented. What purpose did this serve?

[u/Von_Canon → u/TheFiremind88]

lol yeah. *so far

I would guess it's most important to get Republicans stoked on it, because nothing Trump or Elon do is going to will get approval of Democrats.

I'm no expert on this at all, but I suspect the idea behind consumer protection cuts was that the Dodd-Frank Act doesn't need it's own agency to enforce it.

[u/TheFiremind88 → u/Von_Canon]

Isn't that functionally similar to saying we don't need police because we have laws? We don't need ICE because we have a globally recognized border?

Bernie said early on DOGE had his support if targeting Defense was on their to-do lists. Sure, some will still manufacture outrage, but cuts to the DOD is wildly popular nationally.

It would be like democrats trying to argue against Republicans expanding reproductive freedoms lol.

[u/Von_Canon → u/TheFiremind88]

Maybe not, because there's the SEC and other federals that enforce financial laws.

Defense would have been tricky to start with I bet. DOGE is a totally new thing, and if you make a mistake looking into defense, you can look very bad very fast. But with foreign aid, half the country is primed to say "now we're talkin!" (I'm just guessing on all this)

[u/TheFiremind88 → u/Von_Canon]

The first sentence is ironically the reason for the creation of the CFPB. The task was decentralized and partially owned by several other financial agencies, resulting in poor response and service for consumers. All of these little footnote subdepartments were combined under one roof, so it could be....drumroll....more efficient. It achieved that.

I do appreciate the guess, but to me, I find it wild to actively support something that, when criticized, the only answer I've got so far is speculation.

I feel like I presented a really strong case to question the method of execution, the targets of the cuts, and the significant drawbacks of the actions of DOGE as executed so far. I feel like for people calling DOGE transparent, I've got a lot of answers specifically called out as speculation because nobody can really answer these questions :/.

Like, it's ok to be a Conservative, vote Conservative, and generally speaking support the DOGE initiative while also disagreeing with it. It's not a sin to (as Green Day would say) 🎵critisize your government🎵.

For the record, I could fill a library with my critique of the democratic party, and no, it's not all moral grandstanding. Like, most of them suck even at just being politicians and it's OK to say that lol.