Americans think government is wasteful when it’s not outright fraudulent and abusive. That should create a welcoming environment for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its mission to cut fat out of federal agencies on the way to (hopefully) reducing the state and balancing the budget. But support for DOGE is lukewarm. Unsurprisingly in these politically fractured times, cost-cutting efforts are a lot more popular with Republicans than Democrats, but polling suggests the division isn’t just one of partisanship. The DOGE is running up against fundamental disagreements over the role of government and the people who staff it—and the price people are willing to pay for a less-obnoxious government.
Corrupt and Inefficient Government, but Iffy Support for DOGE
Last year, Pew Research polling found that 56 percent of Americans say government is “almost always wasteful and inefficient.” The Babbie Centre at Chapman University reported that “nearly 2/3 of Americans fear that our government is run by corrupt officials.” And last month, A.P.-NORC researchers found 70 percent of Americans believe corruption is a major problem in the federal government, 65 percent say the same of inefficiency, and 59 percent see red tape—including regulations and bureaucracy—as a major problem.
Yet DOGE draws just a 39 percent “favorable” rating in the latest The Economist/YouGov poll, a bare three points ahead of “unfavorable” at 36 percent (25 percent picked “don’t know”). A poll this month from Trafalgar Group found 49 percent approving of the cost-cutting efforts of DOGE and Elon Musk, with 44 percent disapproving (7 percent were undecided). That’s more support than opposition in both cases, but you’d expect greater enthusiasm from a public that overwhelmingly considers government to be corrupt and wasteful (with plenty of evidence to support that position).
Part of the explanation, of course, is partisanship. Anything done by officials from one of the major parties is bound to be booed by the opposition, no matter what. As Gallup’s Jeffrey M. Jones pointed out in 2022, “generally speaking, Republicans and Democrats are more inclined to say the government has too much power when the president is from the other party, and less inclined when a president from their own party is in the White House.” That tribalism likely extends to cutting government as well, even if the cuts apply to agencies controlled for the moment by political enemies. Sure enough, both Trafalgar and The Economist/YouGov found far greater support for DOGE among Republicans than among Democrats (independents split the difference).
Democrats Want More Government, Flaws and All
But there are also real differences in attitudes toward the role of the state. The same Pew poll that reported widespread belief in the wastefulness and inefficiency of government also found that 49 percent of respondents “would prefer a smaller government providing fewer services” while 48 percent “would rather have a bigger government providing more services.” And the partisan divide here isn’t just tribal, it’s ideological. Despite fluctuations depending on who is in power, Republicans have overwhelmingly favored a smaller government providing fewer services since polling on the issue began in 1976 (support for bigger government peaked among them at about one-third in 1988 and 2004). Democratic support for larger, more active government grew from 49 percent in 1976 to 74 percent now.
Democrats in the A.P.-NORC poll were just slightly kinder than Republicans in their opinions on government corruption, efficiency, and red tape; majorities agree the federal government is corrupt and inefficient, while a 47 percent plurality says that red tape is a major problem. Given the overwhelming belief that government is corrupt and wasteful, but iffy support for DOGE, it’s fair to conclude that at least some Democrats are willing to put up with those concerns as the price of a larger state.
Partisan disagreement over the role of government also applies to trust in the people who staff the federal bureaucracy. These are the people the Trump administration offered buyouts and seeks to reduce in number, much like the Clinton administration did in the 1990s. Support for reducing the federal workforce depends, to a large extent, on agreement that those workers are part of the problem—or at least that we’d be better off with fewer of them. That’s not a universal opinion.
“Just 38% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents express a great deal or a fair amount of confidence in federal career employees,” Pew Research noted last week. That’s down 10 points from 2018. “In contrast, 72% of Democrats and Democratic leaners say they have confidence in career government employees – 7 points higher than in 2022, but on par with 2018 levels.”
So, if we’re to believe what members of the public tell researchers, majorities of Americans across partisan divides think the federal government is corrupt and inefficient. But a fair number of those who hold this position—Democrats, in particular—are confident that the people employed by the federal government aren’t responsible for that corruption and efficiency. Those problems appear from somewhere, perhaps as a miasma emanating from the swamp that D.C. was in years past. Also, many of those concerned that corruption and inefficiency plague the government are willing to put up with those handicaps so that the corrupt and inefficient government can play a larger role in our lives.
Republicans Also Want Their Expensive Goodies
Of course, consistency and logic aren’t necessarily common features of public opinion. As I’ve noted before, Republicans and Democrats may disagree when it comes to broad philosophical statements about the size and role of government, but when it comes to specifics, there’s more that unites them than divides them. Majorities of partisans of both parties as well as of independents want more federal spending on Social Security, Education, and Medicare, according to A.P.-NORC. A majority of Democrats also want more to be spent on Medicaid and assistance to the poor, while a majority of Republicans similarly want more dedicated to border security and the military.
Social Security is almost a quarter of federal spending all by itself, while Medicare, Medicaid, and other health care are slightly more, by the Cato Institute’s reckoning. National defense is about 13 percent, as is income security, with interest on federal debt right behind. DOGE faces quite an uphill battle to succeed in its mission to slash the size and cost of federal government.
DOGE faces obstacles from Democrats who recognize that the government is corrupt and inefficient but want more of it anyway. It also faces a challenge in Republicans and independents who say they want less government but don’t want to surrender their favorite boondoggles.
Americans are lukewarm about DOGE because they’re torn about its mission. Sure, they have a low opinion of the federal government, but they might be willing to put up with its deep flaws so long as it delivers their goodies.
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“So we’re going to have an order on that pretty soon – we can’t do that to our farmers and leisure too, hotels, we’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.”
President Donald Trump said Thursday that changes are coming to his aggressive immigration policies after complaints from farmers and business owners.
“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump wrote in a social media post Thursday morning. “In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”
Later Thursday, Trump made it clear that businesses need workers.
“Our farmers are being hurt badly. They have very good workers – they’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be great. And we’re going to have to do something about that,” the president said.
He added: “We can’t take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don’t have, maybe, what they’re supposed to have.”
Just how Trump may change his approach to immigration enforcement remains unclear, but he said he wants to help farmers and business owners.
“You go into a farm and you look and people, they’ve been there for 20 or 25 years and they work great and the owner of the farm loves them and you’re supposed to throw them out. You know what happens? They end up hiring the criminals that have come in, the murderers from prisons and everything else,” Trump said.
Trump said changes would be coming soon, but gave little detail on how policies could change.
“So we’re going to have an order on that pretty soon – we can’t do that to our farmers and leisure too, hotels, we’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.”
In a later post on Truth Social, Trump said illegal immigration had destroyed American institutions.
“Biden let 21 Million Unvetted, Illegal Aliens flood into the Country from some of the most dangerous and dysfunctional Nations on Earth — Many of them Rapists, Murderers, and Terrorists. This tsunami of Illegals has destroyed Americans’ Public Schools, Hospitals, Parks, Community Resources, and Living Conditions,” the president wrote. “They have stolen American Jobs, consumed BILLIONS OF DOLLARS in Free Welfare, and turned once idyllic Communities, like Springfield, Ohio, into Third World Nightmares.”
He added that deportations would continue: “I campaigned on, and received a Historic Mandate for, the largest Mass Deportation Program in American History. Polling shows overwhelming Public Support for getting the Illegals out, and that is exactly what we will do. As Commander-in-Chief, I will always protect and defend the Heroes of ICE and Border Patrol, whose work has already resulted in the Most Secure Border in American History. Anyone who assaults or attacks an ICE or Border Agent will do hard time in jail. Those who are here illegally should either self deport using the CBP Home App or, ICE will find you and remove you. Saving America is not negotiable!”
For years, Canada’s political class sold us on the idea that carbon taxes were clever policy. Not just a tool to cut emissions, but a fair one – tax the polluters, then cycle the money back to regular folks, especially those with thinner wallets.
It wasn’t a perfect system. The focus-group-tested line embraced for years by the Trudeau Liberals made no sense at all: we’re taxing you so we can put more money back in your pocketbooks. What the hell? If you care so much about my taxes being low, just cut them already. Somehow, it took years and years of this line being repeated for its internal contradiction to become evident to all.
Yet, even many strategic conservative minds could see the thinking had internal logic. You could sell it at a town hall. As an editorial team member at an influential news organization when B.C. got its carbon tax in 2008, I bought into the concept too.
And now? That whole model has been thrown overboard, by the very parties had long defended it with a straight face and an arch tone. In both Ottawa and Victoria in 2025, progressive governments facing political survival abandoned the idea of climate policy as a matter of fairness, opting instead for tactical concessions meant to blunt the momentum of their foes.
The result: lower-income Canadians who had grown accustomed to carbon tax rebates as a dependable backstop are waking up to find the support gone. And higher earners? They just got a tidy little gift from the state.
The betrayal is worse in B.C.
This new chart from economist Ken Peacock tells the story. He shared it last week at the B.C. Chamber of Commerce annual gathering in Nanaimo.
Ken-Peacock- B.C. Chamber of Commerce annual gathering in Nanaimo.
What is shows is that scrapping the carbon tax means the poor are poorer. The treasury is emptier.
What about the rich?
Yup, you guessed it: richer.
Scrubbing the B.C. consumer carbon tax leaves the lowest earning 20 percent of households $830 per year poorer, while the top one-fifth gain $959.
“Climate leader” British Columbia’s approach was supposed to be the gold standard: a revenue-neutral carbon tax, accepted by industry, supported by voters, and engineered to send the right price signal without growing the size of government.
That pact broke somewhere along the way.
Instead of returning the money, the provincial government slowly transformed the tax into a $2 billion annual cash cow. And when Mark Carney won the federal election, B.C. Premier David Eby, boxed in by his own pledge, scrapped the tax like a man dropping ballast from a sinking balloon. Gone. No replacement. No protections for those who need them most.
Filling the gas tank, on the other hand, is noticeably cheaper. Of course, if you can’t afford a car that might not be apparent.
Spare a thought for the climate activists who spent 15 years flogging this policy, only to watch it get tossed aside like a stack of briefing notes on a Friday afternoon.
Who could not conclude that the environmental left has been played. For a political movement that prides itself on idealism, it’s a brutal lesson in realpolitik: when power’s on the line, principles are negotiable.
But here’s the thing: maybe the carbon tax model deserved a rethink. Maybe it’s time for a grown-up look at what actually works
With B.C. now reviewing its CleanBC policies, here’s a basic question: what’s working, and what’s not?
A lot of emission reductions in this province didn’t come from government fiat. They were the result of business-led innovation: more efficient technology, cleaner fuels, and capital discipline.
That, plus a hefty dose of offshoring. We’ve pushed our industrial emissions onto other jurisdictions, then shipped the finished goods back without attaching any climate cost. This contradiction particularly helped to fuel the push to dump carbon pricing as a failed solution.
The progressives’ choice was made once the anti-tax arguments could no longer be refuted: to limit losses it would be necessary to deep six an unpopular strand of the overall carbon strategy. This, to save the rest. That’s why policies like the federal emissions cap haven’t also been abandoned.
To give another example, it’s also why British Columbia’s aviation sector is in a flap over the issue of sustainable aviation fuel. Despite years of aspirational policy, low emissions jet fuel blends remain more scarce than a long-haul cabin upgrade. The policy’s designers correctly anticipated that refiners would never be able to meet the imposed demand, and so as an alternative they provided a complex carbon credit trading scheme that will make the cost of flying more expensive. For those with a choice, nearby airport hubs in the United States where these policies do not apply will become an attractive alternative, while remote communities that have no choice in the matter will simply have to eat the cost. (Needless to say, if emissions reduction is your goal this policy isn’t needed anyways, since the decisions that matter in reducing global aviation emissions aren’t made in B.C. and never will be.)
I’m not showing up to bash those who have been genuinely trying to figure things out, and found themselves in a world of policy that is more complicated and unpredictable than they realized. Simply put, the chapter is closing on an era of energy policy naïveté.
The brutally honest action by Eby and Carney to eject carbon taxes for their own political survival could be read as a signal that it’s now okay to have an honest public conversation. Let’s insist on that. For years now, debate has been constrained in part by a particular form of linguistic tyranny, awash in terminology designed to cow the questioner into silence. “So you have an issue with clean policies, do you? What kind of dirty reprobate are you?” “Only a monster doesn’t want their aviation fuel to be sustainable.” Etc. Now is the moment to move on from that, and widen the field of discourse.
Ditching bad policy is also a signal that just maybe a better approach is to start by embracing a robust sense of the possibilities for energy to improve lives and empower all of the solutions needed for tomorrow’s problems. Because that’s the only way the conversation will ever get real.
Slogans, wildly aspirational goal setting and the habit of refusing to acknowledge how the world really works have been getting us nowhere. Petroleum products will continue to obey Yergin’s Law: oil always gets to market. China and India will grow their economies using reliable energy they can afford, having recently approved the construction of the most new coal power plants in a decade amid energy security concerns. Japan, which has practically worn itself out pleading for natural gas from Canada, isn’t waiting for the help of last-finishing nice guys to guarantee energy security: today, they are buying 8% of their LNG imports from the evil Putin regime.
Meanwhile, we’re in the worst of both worlds: our courageous carbon tax policy that was positioned as trailblazing not just for B.C. residents but for the world as a whole – climate leadership! – is gone, the poorest are puzzling over why things feel even more expensive, and nobody knows what comes next.
Ken-Peacock- B.C. Chamber of Commerce annual gathering in Nanaimo.
