RUTHFULLY YOURS

Americans have shown a high-degree of support for the cuts being made to the federal bureaucracy and spending by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Why? A majority across the country believe the government wastes vast amounts of their tax money, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

For the March online national I&I/TIPP Poll, voters were asked the following question: “What percentage of your tax dollars do you believe is wasted by the federal government?” The possible responses included: “Less than 10%,” “10%-25%,” “26%-50%,” “51%-75%,” “More than 75%,” and “Not sure.”

It’s fair to say that Americans see a lot of their money being wasted. Among the 1,434 people who took the poll from Feb. 26-28, 52% responded that they felt more than 25% of their tax money was being wasted, with the breakdown showing 24% responding 26%-50%, 14% at 51%-75%, and another 14% guessing 76% or more.

By comparison, just 19% answered 10%-25% and only 10% agreed it was less than 10% waste. Meanwhile, “Not sure” notched 19% of the responses. (The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.6 percentage points).

While Republicans were more likely to see waste in the spending of their tax dollars, significant shares of both Democrats and independents also saw faulty expenditures.

While a hefty 64% of Republicans said the government was wasting more than 25% of their tax dollars, 52% of independents agreed, along with a not-insubstantial 44% of Democrats.

Clearly, the federal government has a serious image problem when a majority or near-majority of all the major voting groups agree it’s wasting more than a quarter of all the taxes they pay.

Moreover, this is an issue that transcends race and ethnicity. Among black and Hispanic voters, 51% agree that more than one-fourth of their tax money is wasted; for whites, it’s 54%, virtually the same.

But that wasn’t the only question about big government waste. I&I/TIPP followed up with this question: “In your opinion, what is the biggest source of waste and fraud in the federal government?”

In descending order, 33% of respondents chose “Corruption and misuse of funds”; 18% answered “Lack of accountability and oversight”; 13% complained of “Excessive government contracts and subsidies”; 11% mentioned “Overpaid government employees”; 10% responded “Inefficient bureaucracy and redundant programs”; and 4% said “other.”

That first number jumps out. Fully a third of voters blame “corruption and misuse of funds” as the main reason for the waste.

And, once again, there’s perhaps surprising agreement among all the major political groupings about the main problems behind the waste: “Corruption and misuse of funds” (Dems 32%, Republicans 37%, independents and third parties 32%) and “Lack of accountability and oversight” (Dems 17%, GOP 20%, independents 18%).

It’s pretty clear that the voting public is deeply cynical about how government spends its tax dollars. Which likely explains the popularity of DOGE.

Data from 2023 show the U.S. government spent roughly $6.2 trillion. Doing the math implied by the responses to the I&I/TIPP Poll, that means that 52% of Americans believe that the government wastes at least $1.5 trillion of that larger overall amount, and possibly as much as $3 trillion or more.

That’s an astounding amount of waste.

A big part of the problem is the sheer size of government means almost no one truly knows how much is being spent or wasted. To many fiscal policy analysts, that’s shocking.

“On Jan. 16, four days before Biden vacated the White House, the Government Accounting Office said it was ‘unable to provide an opinion on the reliability of the federal government’s consolidated financial statements for fiscal year 2024 and 2023’,” wrote James Varney of Real Clear Investigations.

“The Office of Management and Budget has also flunked six of the 24 departments and agencies it looked at, including Labor and Education. The Defense Department has failed seven consecutive audits, while the Department of Education hasn’t gotten a ‘clean’ opinion for three years,” Varney added.

Elon Musk, DOGE’s chief, has complained about the lack of federal budget transparency. Musk targets somewhere around $1 trillion in total spending cuts (that’s roughly $4 billion in spending a day), but it’s hard to really know what some of the departments and agencies are spending — not to mention, where the money is going.

The trouble at the U.S. Agency for International Development is one big example. USAID “waste, fraud and abuse” is a long list, including:

• $1.5 million to “advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities,”
• $70,000 for production of a “DEI musical” in Ireland
• $2.5 million for electric vehicles for Vietnam
• $47,000 for a “transgender opera” in Colombia
• $32,000 for a “transgender comic book” in Peru
• $2 million for sex changes and “LGBT activism” in Guatemala
• $6 million to fund tourism in Egypt
• Hundreds of thousands of dollars for a non-profit linked to designated terrorist organizations — even AFTER an inspector general launched an investigation
• Millions to EcoHealth Alliance — which was involved in research at the Wuhan lab
• “Hundreds of thousands of meals that went to al Qaeda-affiliated fighters in Syria”.

And so on.

This is only a partial list, for just one agency out of dozens more that have yet to be investigated. Last fiscal year, USAID spent $44 billion. How much was waste or fraud? It’s still not entirely clear.

Indeed, DOGE keeps turning over America’s fiscal rocks, and finding slimy, wriggly things underneath.

For example, the 5,593 Small Business Administration loans were processed “for $312M to borrowers whose only listed owner was 11 years old or younger at the time of the loan.” Another $333 million went to borrowers who were supposedly over 115 years old.

Sound suspicious? It is. And that doesn’t include the signs of favoritism and outright fraud that have become evident as DOGE combs through the government’s poorly-kept books. If DOGE’s fiscal investigation so far shows anything, it’s that those who responded to the I&I/TIPP Poll might be too conservative in their estimates of federal government waste.

I&I/TIPP publishes timely, unique, and informative data each month on topics of public interest. TIPP’s reputation for polling excellence comes from being the most accurate pollster for the past six presidential elections.

Terry Jones is an editor of Issues & Insights. His four decades of journalism experience include serving as national issues editor, economics editor, and editorial page editor for Investor’s Business Daily.