Thread by @Doc_0

Debates over big spending bills like "infrastructure" absurdly proceed as if the U.S. government is tiny and underfunded, and this is the first time it has asked the American people for vast sums of money to tackle the problem under discussion.

In truth, the government is floating in a vast sea of money, and billions of it just vanish into thin air - absorbed by staggering bureaucratic costs, stolen by fraudsters, poured into political slush funds. A great deal of that money is weaponized against the American people.

There is absolutely ZERO reason to believe the current administration and federal bureaucracy can be trusted with billions of dollars to build infrastructure. Everything about their track record argues to the contrary. The American people would be fools to trust them.

They're not even PRETENDING that most of this money will actually go to "infrastructure." In the past we got big promises of gleaming bridges, crackling power lines, and miraculous trains, but after the bill was passed, Democrats diverted the money into slush funds.

This time they're admitting right up front that most of the money they demand will be poured into their pet projects, special interests, social engineering programs, and political operations. If we're REALLY lucky, a nickel on the dollar MIGHT build actual roads and bridges.

It's a huge problem that we can't trust our government to build roads, or fulfill any of its other duties. Even if it tried, the rest of our political system would block true "infrastructure" projects or rob them blind. Our political class spends money. It doesn't build stuff.

The notion of modern America building something like the Hoover Dam - or a functioning "high-speed rail" network - is utterly laughable. The American PEOPLE can still work wonders, but their government has degenerated into primitive bureaucratic savagery.

This is reflected in the infantile tactics our political class employs to swindle us today. When you hear an idiot like Joe Biden babbling about trains that move as fast as planes, you know your political system has completely run out of vision and imagination.

They can't make any kind of logical, rational argument for big federal spending on infrastructure, so they don't even try. They just wave lollipops at us and make goo-goo noises. They know this is all just a game, and they win when they get their hands on our money.

This is one of the many reasons government should be entrusted with limited powers while private industry does most of the work. The record of achievement, or failure, of private companies MATTERS. They get sued for making fraudulent claims and embezzling funds.

Somehow we've become a society that spends hours poring over Yelp reviews before hiring someone to mow our lawns... but we'll let the same incompetent swindlers in DC demand trillions more for "infrastructure" without a word about their long record of fraud and failure.

We keep pouring money into a bankrupt, corrupt, SYSTEMICALLY incompetent government and hoping this time the Nigerian prince will finally deposit his millions in our bank accounts. This time we'll get results instead of theft, waste, and special interest feeding frenzies.

There is no reason to give a single extra penny to a government teeming with waste and fraud, institutionally incapable of honesty or discipline. Let's have the political elite show us a little good faith for a change and finance "infrastructure" entirely with cuts and reforms.

The actual amount of money flagged for anything that could legitimately be described as "infrastructure" in the current proposals could easily be financed by cutting bloat and waste from existing federal programs. EASILY. Junk the rest and do that.

Is that really so much to ask of our princely government, after WE'VE made so many sacrifices during the pandemic? If this "infrastructure" is so vital, let the aristocracy in DC pay for it, as a gesture of faith and loyalty to the American people, and to prove it CAN reform.

I'll wager the few waste-and-abuse hawks in Congress could produce a list of expensive bullshit that could be slashed to pay for the truly necessary infrastructure spending by the end of this business day. Let's commission THAT proposal and let the American people consider it.

And then let's appoint a large, serious, bipartisan oversight team to ensure every dollar of that money actually goes to roads and bridges. No special interest heists, no madcap environmentalist lawsuits, no bait and switch. Make this system prove it can actually build a bridge.

I warn you, "infrastructure" has already turned into another rolling grift for the political class, and it's one of the biggest, juiciest cons they have going. They will NEVER keep their promises to build stuff. Why should they? That would actually harm their true interests.

If I demand a trillion dollars and then actually build a trillion dollars' worth of infrastructure, it's over and done. I did my job. The people don't need to give me any more money, especially if I did my job extremely well. There's no power or profit in that.

But if I demand a trillion dollars and then steal, lose, or misallocate most of it, then I get to come back and demand another trillion to fix those "crumbling roads and bridges," just like Barack Obama did. I can keep that scam up FOREVER, sounding pious every step of the way.

See also: education, welfare spending. You can count on our degenerate political class to steal most of the money you give them, deliberately make every problem WORSE, and then demand more money to fix the problems YOU supposedly don't "care " about as much as they do.

There is a fundamental contradiction between the "Great Reset" model of rebooting democracy with an authoritarian core, because authoritarian power is supposedly needed to get important things done, and the reality of a zillion-dollar government that can't actually DO anything.

We should reject the authoritarianism on principle anyway, but it's a false promise even when taken on its own merits. Our political class is too greedy, corrupt, and ideologically blind to accomplish anything on a grand scale, no matter how much power or money we give them.

We need to break this government down, liberate most of its money and manpower, force it to live within its means, and get back to an America where value is demanded for every dollar, and accountability is demanded for every theft and failure. THAT should be the Great Reset. /end