1. The biggest amount of money goes to entitlements like Social Security - so, raise the retirement age and increase the SS payroll tax, it's been stuck at 6.2% for years.

2. Cut defense spending - kill the LCS, V-22 Osprey, and V-280 Valor for starters.

     Do we really need 11 aircraft carriers? Do we really need 60 nuclear powered attack submarines?

3. Raise the federal gasoline tax - to help pay for infrastructure - it's been stuck at 18.4 cents per gallon, since 1993.

This is the article I was referring to, but I cam't see all of it, because it's behind a paywall.

But, here's another source:

Cloth Masks Are Useless Against COVID-19 (Redux): Omicron Version

When Lisa Brosseau, ScD, a nationally recognized expert on infectious diseases, spoke to Infection Control Today^® (ICT^®) back in April 2020, the resulting Q&A seems to have resonated with the public and health care professionals alike. Titled “Cloth Masks Are Useless Against COVID-19,” the article is the second most read story on the ICT^® website, with nearly 350,000 pageviews since its publication. (The most viewed article on the ICT^® website reported on the Lambda variant. Remember that scare?)

Brosseau seemed perplexed that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that the public use cloth masks. (There was a shortage of N95 masks at the time, and the CDC wanted to preserve them for use by health care workers on the frontlines.)

“I don’t understand the CDC’s recommendations for this,” Brosseau said. “My guess is that there’s a lot of political pressure. And no government agency is entirely immune from political pressure.”

Kevin Kavanagh, MD, a member of ICT^®’s Editorial Advisory Board, said at the time that while cloth masks might not keep someone from catching COVID-19, they may help prevent them from spreading it.

In an article in May 2020 in ICT^®, Kavanagh wrote that “when one exhales, coughs or sneezes, the particles are fairly directional and directed into the mask. One study estimated that cloth masks can stop up to 90% of droplets…. And over 100 countries now recommend the wearing of cloth masks by the public.”

But what a difference a new COVID-19 variant can make. Kavanagh’s advice in 2020 had been tailored to the original variants of COVID-19, Alpha and Beta. When Delta appeared, Kavanagh altered his advice to fit the new reality. In a Q&A with ICT^® in July 2021, Kavanagh said that “we need to be wearing respirators or N95s. Cloth masks, surgical masks with holes on the sides—those will not work.”

https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/view/cloth-masks-are-useless-against-covid-19-redux-omicron-version

To fix Social Security without making us all work until we're 85, we could bump up the payroll tax a smidge, make the rich pay their fair share by raising the income cap or taxing their benefits more. Or, let’s throw some Trust Fund money into the stock market and hope it grows like a viral cat video. We could also trim benefits for the super rich or slap on a wealth tax. Basically, let's make the system work without making it feel like a never ending job interview.

The cycle begins anew!

The first article says all you need in the title. Read it again. Operative words "as effectively".

The second bit is someone disagreeing with the CDC so it really has no sway here. If anything it reinforced my point that the CDC did not say what you claimed.

Pretty much every private company spends "unnecessary" money on extraneous employee benefits, and stuff for the company that probably isn't 100% necessary.

Companies spend plenty of money on furniture, kitchenware, exercise rooms. Some of these things can help keep employees happy, while they're at their job. 

Maybe it saves them money through employee retention. 

Maybe employees want flexibility so that they can work outside during the day, and not be stuck at their desks? 

Maybe it also helps employees who want to work a little bit later in the day. 

Maybe it helps them conduct business meetings. Even private companies spend a lot of money for that kind of thing.

Exactly.

Rand Paul, as a senator should hopefully have a better idea of government spending than most people.

Yet his demonstration of how wasteful government is, feels like such a stretch, it doesn't feel particularly convincing. 

"Pretty much every private company spends "unnecessary" money on extraneous employee benefits"

     We are talking about the federal gov't spending our tax dollars wastefully, not about private company wasteful spending.
----------------------------
"Maybe employees want flexibility so that they can work outside during the day, and not be stuck at their desks?"

     Fine work outside, but you don't need an $8000 picnic table to do your work outside.

I already did say the money was wasteful. I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just saying we can talk about the other layers to this. 

But I'll go even further and say, being able to "waste" money is kind of an important good part of government. Being able to invest in helpful technologies that private industry wouldn't because they're not profitable is important. We wouldn't have space exploration without it. SpaceX wouldn't exist without NASA existing. 

The vast majority of space firsts were done by government programs.

Being able to invest in green technologies, is an important government responsibility right now. 

Yeah, in order for any sufficiently large system to micro manage it's spending, you would have to have a large and expensive system sitting counter it for auditing purposes, which would also reduce efficiency and turnaround for spending that is ultimately improved. It's kind of an impossible problem. Improvements can obviously be made, but it's not as simple as "expensive table bad", and even if it was, that isn't where the heart of our spending woes lie

Pi, nobody loves the US space program more than me.

It is true that SpaceX wouldn't exist like it does today, if NASA didn't award it a contract under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) program to send supplies to the ISS.

I am a huge supporter of ARPA-E, the DOE's version of DARPA, which invests in risky, but potentially rewarding green technologies.

In fact, during Obama's first term, I even wrote a letter to the White House proposing the creation of such an agency, only I named my concept as "EARPA".

In case anyone is wondering if I'm full of BS, here's my letter to Obama and the response.