The US no longer passes an actual budget. Congress and the president rely on continuing resolutions that automatically increase departmental spending by 3–7% every year with no accountability. Scaramucci traces this to the collapse of the formal budget process under Obama and Paul Ryan in 2011.
Where this was said
At 32:37 · chapter starts 28:30
Scaramucci pivots to DOGE, noting that its July 4th end date passed almost without comment — even Kay had forgotten it was happening. The DOGE website claims roughly $215 billion in savings through job cuts and contract cancellations, but Kay immediately flags that even this number is widely disputed and represents a drop in the ocean against a $7 trillion federal budget. [1] — Katty Kay "DOGE did real damage in one place: USAID. Harvard doctor Atul Gawande estimates 600,000 to 800,000 people have died as a result of the fore…" 30:20 The real damage, both hosts agree, was done to USAID: Scaramucci estimates 800,000 people have died as a result of gutted foreign aid programmes; Kay cites Harvard's Atul Gawande putting the range at 600,000 to 800,000. The USAID budget was not large to begin with, which makes the death toll even more confronting. Scaramucci then gives a structural explanation for why the $2 trillion goal was always fantasy: the government's budget is no longer subject to a formal annual process — continuing resolutions have replaced real budgets since around 2011, baking in automatic 3–7% departmental increases with no accountability and no way to challenge them without political martyrdom.
DOGE promised $2 trillion in government savings but ultimately fell dramatically short of that figure by its July 4th 2026 end date.
The DOGE website claimed approximately $215 billion saved through job cuts and contract cancellations, far short of the $2 trillion target.
DOGE did real damage in one place: USAID. Harvard doctor Atul Gawande estimates 600,000 to 800,000 people have died as a result of the foreign aid cuts. The USAID budget wasn't large to begin with, which makes that death toll even more chilling.
Harvard doctor Atul Gawande cited estimates of 600,000 to 800,000 deaths attributable to DOGE's cuts to USAID programs.
The structural reason DOGE failed: mandatory entitlements and defence spending are untouchable politically, and without pay-as-you-go guardrails there is no accountability mechanism. Scaramucci explains that fixing a runaway government requires decades of bipartisan consensus, not a chainsawing billionaire on a stage.
Fei-Fei Li went back to Stanford from Google in 2018 specifically to build a multi-stakeholder governance framework for AI. Her argument: market forces are not societal norms. Just as biology uses IRBs and cars have safety laws, AI needs layered oversight from educators, governments, and the public — not just a few industry titans.
Andrew Santino's personal MCU of political villains is collapsing. He and Bobby speculated that a circulating photo of Mitch McConnell with a Chinese official was AI-generated compositing two separate images.
Mass surveillance is here to stay. The real battle isn't stopping cameras — it's ensuring judges and laws keep that data out of family court and civil disputes, admitting it only for violent crimes and national security. The surveillance economy currently yields more upside than downside, but only if we build the legal guardrails now.
When people cite Scandinavia as proof socialism works, Galloway says they've got it backwards. Northern Europe runs highly competitive free-market economies with more competition in many sectors than the US — they just make sure taxes are actually paid and redistributed. Billionaires and universal healthcare can coexist.
Two percent adjustments to income tax and stamp duty tweaks are deck-chair rearrangements. The UK's competitiveness hinges on four structural levers: currency valuation, energy costs, regulatory burden, and tax rates. Devalue the pound, build 56 nuclear plants, slash red tape, introduce a flat tax — and the country transforms.
Lisbon had one of Europe's worst heroin crises. Then Portugal legalised drugs and redirected all enforcement money into rehabilitation and housing. Crime collapsed. Addiction fell. Then politics moved the money elsewhere, and the problem started creeping back. Chesterton's Fence: you forget why you were spending that money.
Congress passed the Boland Amendment 411 to 0, explicitly banning CIA and Defense Department funds for the Contras. Reagan signed it — then immediately moved the operation deeper underground, essentially responding to a bipartisan prohibition by going more illegal.
The CIA planted mines in Nicaraguan commercial harbors, wrote the Contras' press releases taking credit, and promptly blew up ships from four allied nations. The Wall Street Journal broke the story, Congress erupted, and the Boland Amendments multiplied.
Oliver North was a decorated Marine and devout Catholic with zero covert operations experience. He ran the entire shadow war against Congress — planes, airstrips, arms shipments, shell companies — learning on the job. And by every operational measure, he crushed it.
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