one-upmanship

Reader's Digest 12/1月合併号の記事 'What A Waste!' からの引用です。

The Defence Department budget is massive, weighing in at more than $715 billion, and that doesn't include funds for Veterans Affairs. As one might imagine, with that much money floating around, it can--and does--become politicized. Finalized budgets, says Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, are the result of political virtue-signaling and one-upmanship on the part of Congress: "'You want to spend $500 billion? Well, I want to spend $700 billion' They don't actually know where that additional $200 billion needs to go. They just want to outspend somebody else."

"one-upmanship" の意味を調べます。

・Oxford English Dictionary: The technique or practice of gaining a feeling of superiority over another person.: the one-upmanship of who can get the best presents

・Collins Dictionary: If you refer to someone's behaviour as one-upmanship, you disapprove of them trying to make other people feel inferior in order to make themselves appear more important.: It was the expression of a man who'd won a trifling game of one-upmanship.

・Cambridge English Dictionary: a situation in which someone does or says something in order to prove that they are better than someone else: Officials complain of his habit of one-upmanship when arranging events with other ministers.

意味は違いますが、日本語のワンマンと似ていますね。

didn't know squat about

Robert B.Parkerの "Sixkill" を読んでいます。
"Insurance on Jumbo," Morrison said.
"Life insurance?" I said.
"Sort of," Morrison said. "With the production company as beneficiaries, in case Jumbo died or became disabled before he finished the film."
"Don't most movies have some kind of completion insurance?" I said.
"Of course," Morrison said. "But the poor dope didn't know squat about the business. He was just trying to sell insurance."

"didn't know squat about" の個所が分かりません。意味を調べます。
"squat" の項で次の説明がありました。
・Collins Dictionary: anything: used in a negative construction signifying “nothing or a very small amount”: he doesn't know squat about it
・Cambridge English Dictionary: anything: he shouldn't talk - she doesn't know squat about it.

Oxford English Dictionaryでは "diddly-squat" の項で説明と例文をあげていました。
informal usually with negative: Anything.: she didn't care diddly-squat about what Darryl thought; they don't know diddly about softball

運動の "squat" はほとんど毎日していますが、こんな意味・表現があるのは知りませんでした。