A large majority of U.S. voters say the federal government is “filled with waste,” should cut spending and needs an agency to ensure its “efficiency,” results of a new Harris survey reveal.
While Democrats in Congress fiercely denounce the efforts of the new Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) created by President Donald Trump, the nation’s registered voters strongly support DOGE’s work, according to the Harris/HarrisX/Harvard CAPS survey, conducted February 19-20.
Strikingly, two-thirds (64%) of registered Democrats say their party should blindly “oppose everything that Trump is doing” (emphasis added), while 66% of all voters think Congressional Democrats should “take more of a wait and see attitude towards his actions.”
This suggests support for Trump’s efforts to eliminate government waste and cut spending would be even higher – if not for those respondents who based their answers on unreasoning bias, instead of on the details and effectiveness of his work.
Likewise, a 57% majority of Democrat voters say their party should accept “government waste” – not “join in the mission of cutting” it.
Conversely, two-thirds (66%) of all U.S. registered voters say Democrats should help cut government waste by reducing expenditures.
Indeed, there is a general consensus among U.S. voters that government spending needs to be scrutinized and slashed:
- 70% say government spending is “filled with waste, fraud, and inefficiency.”
- 67% say the federal government’s debt is “unsustainable.”
- 69% support the goal of cutting $1 trillion in spending (51% of Democrats oppose).
- 59% support cutting government expenditures that were already allocated by Congress.
- 83% say the U.S. government should work to balance the budget in the next few years.
- 63% support “freezing and re-evaluating all foreign aid expenditures and the department that handled them.”
- 83% the U.S. government should reduce its budget deficit by cutting spending, not by increasing taxes.
Three-fourths of U.S. voters say there needs to be a government-wide examination of spending to root out waste – and think there needs to be an agency like Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to do it:
- 76% support a “full-scale effort to find and eliminate fraud and waste in government.”
- 72% say “there should be a U.S. government agency focused on efficiency initiatives.”
- 60% say DOGE “is helping make major cuts in government expenditures.”
Additionally, a slight majority (52%) say DOGE should “have access to all information on government expenditures.”