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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024

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What I'm asking is how much money do we need to shovel into this organization before it starts having enough left over after migrant expenses for hurricane response. The money we're allocating now isn't enough for the hurricane budget after other expenses. How much more money do we need to give before there's enough?

What I'm asking is how much money do we need to shovel into this organization before it starts having enough left over after migrant expenses for hurricane response.

The amount of money it costs to cover hurricane costs is the amount of money it costs to cover hurricane costs. No more, and no less.

Again, your question assumes an invalid premise. There is no 'starts having left over after migrant expenses,' because migrant expenses don't come out of the hurricane response budget in the first place.

The money we're allocating now isn't enough for the hurricane budget after other expenses.

No, the money you allocated for the hurricane budget in the last appropriation months ago isn't enough for the hurricane budget after hurricane expenses.

Non-hurricane expenses had nothing to do with it, because non-hurricane expenses didn't come out of the hurricane funding code.

How much more money do we need to give before there's enough?

X-Y

The amount of money that is enough for all hurricane response expenses incurred the budget period (X), minus the insufficient amount previously budgeted for hurricane response (Y).

You realize that your argument would still apply if we, for example, gave 99.9% of FEMA budget to migrants and basically nothing to actual disaster relief? It is an extremely pedantic argument because you are obscuring that the basic problem is that these federal agencies should be serving the American people facing actual disasters but they are giving money to other people instead. This is so obvious that trying to handwave it with accounting pedantry is ridiculous.

You realize that your argument would still apply if we, for example, gave 99.9% of FEMA budget to migrants and basically nothing to actual disaster relief?

And the argument would still be correct. If you want to spend X amount of money for a purpose, you must appropriate X amount of money for the purpose. If you only appropriated a lesser amount of Y, then you must appropriate the difference to meet the target of X.

If an institution with the power of the purse chooses not to fund something, the money was never in the possession of the non-recipient in the first place. If the power of the purse funds something else, that money was not deceitfully deprived from the alternative recipient- it was never there for them to claim or use in the first place.

It is an extremely pedantic argument because you are obscuring that the basic problem is that these federal agencies should be serving the American people facing actual disasters but they are giving money to other people instead. This is so obvious that trying to handwave it with accounting pedantry is ridiculous.

I am pleased you are retreating from your latest jewish conspiracy theory to petulantly complain about pedantry after and while making embarrassingly basic mistakes on government budgetary practices.

The point is that if you're going to be mad at someone it should be congress for allocating money in a dumb way. It makes no sense to get mad at FEMA for not exercising discretion they don't have.