I will answer this for you, no they were not a waste.  Each government agency has a budget and if the tables were within the agency budget then they should get the tables.  That is why private and federal companies have budgets.  The budget get spent on a number of things from nonsensical to operational you name it.  My company pays for a Christmas party every year that must cost a mil or 2.  That can easily be considered as wasteful but each year they budget out for that party even though it has no real value outside of employees engagement and happiness.

The picnic tables would be considered wasteful if the CDC had to ask for an increase in its budget to afford the tables.  As with any one of these cherry picked articles it never gives you a complete picture.  instead what they do is cherry pick specific things then build a narrative around that subject but what you will never see in that narrative is a true investigative story where they ask the question, what lead to the table purchase, what funds were used, did the CDC cut funding on other stuff to pay for it.  What was the decision on the tables purchase instead of cheaper solutions. 

The thing is you have absolutely no clue on the decision process.  One thing about a budget, is that you spend the money in the budget.  Its not like its going back to someone else or will be absorbed to do something else and for all you know, what was used for the tables already came out of funds that would usually be used for employees engagement and happiness like a Christmas party but was used here instead because of COVID.

That is because he isn't understanding a very simple thing called context.  The word maybe in the last repost of his should have clued him in but it seems he just ignored that part.  This is probably why he believes you are contradicting yourself when you have not made an argument for or against but instead tried to clarify that their could be conditions that we do not understand.

Couldn't the CDC have spent that 240k on something more important than blowing it on 30 picnic tables? If not, why not return, at least some of it, to the taxpayers? 

I'm not saying they didn't need 30 picnic tables, I'm saying they didn't need to buy $8000 ones. Yes, I understand they have a budget, and they could afford these tables, but this is just one tiny example of wasteful government spending. How many more examples of gov't waste are there?

How many budgets at every gov't agency consists of wasteful spending, year after year?

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Also, I'm tired of the "waffling" that has been going on in this thread.

Return it to who.  Every department in government has a budget.  Every department tries to spend all of the money within their budget.  The biggest issue seems you just do not understand how budgets work either in private or federal sector.  The CDC had 240K within its budget to pay for the tables and they paid for the tables.  We have no clue what lead to that decision but it really doesn't matter.  If you can find anything that says the CDC spent more than what they were allotted within their budget than you have a case for wasteful spending.  For all you know, 240k could have been allocated for the Christmas party they canceled because of Covid or any number of functions, gatherings trips etc.

The CDC picnic tables are a prime example of federal gov't wasteful spending. I'm sure there are other examples at other agencies.

I would not be surprised to find out that every federal agency has an excessive budget, at least to some extent.

That is why I am excited about the new, incoming DOGE. Let them deal with the problem of wasteful gov't spending.

Traditional (We Hate Immigrants) MAGA vs Tech Bro (We Need Immigrants) MAGA.

Let them fight, I hate them both, I love this, it's hilarious.

Again, you just do not understand how budgets work and your lack of understanding is why we keep circling this topic.  A budget is a budget, have you never made a budget for yourself.  My wife and I do it for every month and for the entire year.  We know how much money we bring in, we know all of our expenses and we budget for family events we know we need to save for.  Then there is personal budget, we put money into where each of us spend that money on whatever we like.  Meaning I do not care how she spends her personal budget and she doesn't care how I spend mine.  All of the money is budgeted to go somewhere.

For a company or federal agency its pretty much the same thing.  All of the money they are budgeted for is allocated for something but there is also allocation within the budget for things like Christmas parties, trips and so forth.  You call it wasteful spending because you have no clue the money allocated for these personal events which funded the tables.  The thing is, if it was within budget, then they had the money to pay for it.  While it may not be what YOU would spend it for, you do not work for the CDC so you have no clue if that is something the employees decided they wanted.  Either way, if they did it within budget then it wasn't wasteful.

And Yes, every agency just like every company usually have discretionary accounts.  Funny enough, I am sure if we looked at the discretionary accounts for congress it probably would blow you mind.  I hope we see how much this DODGE employees will be paid for their work since we already have an agency doing the job.  That in itself could be considered wasteful money.  Paying a company to do the exact same job as one we already have a budget for whose is made up of people who have no clue how the government works.

Elon Musk realising he has cultivated a bunch of racist fascists on his platform.

But Musk is also a hypocrite, he will say the tech industry needs immigrants only because his companies are tech companies (and likely because they're easier to exploit), but will he accept that other industries rely on immigration too or will he just be like "fuck them" because he only cares about his own businesses? Immigrants for me but not for thee? Lol.

Do you agree that budgets, at any level, can be "excessive?" ...and if they are, isn't that a bad thing?

I guess we already knew that Elon Musk declaration that X was for free speech was a sham but damn, I thought he would at least try to hide it a lot better.  I mean using the platform to retaliate against people who disagree with him is seriously going to hurt his presidency.  Lets see how this all plays out.  I always thought Musk and the right really was not a great fit since he definitely is probably more middle.