The majority of Americans generally support the idea of cutting back on the federal government, polling finds.
The Pew Research poll from this summer found that 56% of Americans say the government is “almost always wasteful and inefficient.”
Gallup’s recent polling data shows that 55% of Americans say the government is doing “too much” while only 41% say it should do more. Americans are more evenly split how big the government should be, but increasing government efficiency has more broad support.
“Gallup polling earlier this year showed that 58% of Americans are dissatisfied with the size and power of the federal government,” Gallup said. “A slight majority of Americans say the government has too much power. Seven in 10 Americans in 2019 agreed that businesses can do things more efficiently than the federal government.”
The survey comes after President-elect Donald Trump won the White House and issued broad, sweeping plans to decrease the scope of the federal government.
To accomplish this task, Trump appointed businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and billionaire Elon Musk to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency.
“Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies – Essential to the ‘Save America’ Movement,’” Trump said in his announcement.
Both Ramaswamy and Musk have publicly issued scathing remarks about the waste of federal resources currently occurring in Washington, D.C. Ramaswamy, for instance, has laid out a specific plan on how thousands of federal workers could be fired.
The pair of businessmen have said publicly DOGE could cut $2 trillion in federal spending.
Ramaswamy and Musk visited Capitol Hill on Thursday to meet with lawmakers to discuss the potential cuts, which could even include ideas as drastic as eliminating the Department of Education and returning that responsibility to the states.
Trump’s allies have also discussed cutting spending on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which are seen by Trump’s camp as taxpayer-funded investment in woke ideology.
Whether such stark actions would be supported by Americans remains unclear, but for now the latest polling shows Americans want something to be done.
On top of that, Americans’ desire for smaller government seems to be more than a momentary political phase.
“Gallup has asked this question annually over the past 24 years. On average, 52% of Americans have said the government is doing too much, compared with 42% saying the government should do more…” Gallup said. “Only twice have more Americans chosen the ‘government should do more’ alternative over the ‘government doing too much’ alternative — in 2001 after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and in 2020 after the outbreak of COVID-19.”
