Mandate to DOGE
Does DOGE have much of a mandate? How popular is Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency? And does it matter?
Interesting new poll results from Harvard CAPS/ Harris via Mark Penn show DOGE is popular:
70% of voters say government expenditures are filled with waste, fraud, and inefficiency
60% of voters think DOGE is helping make major cuts in government expenditures.
58% of voters say…— Sara Eisen (@SaraEisen) February 24, 2025
The Harvard/Harris poll cited above (results here) finds that “67% of voters say the current level of U.S. federal government debt is unsustainable” with 77 percent saying “a full examination of all government expenditures is necessary.” Though a majority of voters are worried by DOGE employees having access to people’s private information, “70% of voters say government expenditures are filled with waste, fraud, and inefficiency (Democrats: 58%; Republicans: 78%; Independents: 75%), and 69% support the goal of cutting $1 trillion of government expenditures.” Fully 60 percent believe “DOGE is helping make major cuts in government expenditures.” But some polls—like a mid-February Quinnipiac one, in which 55 percent of respondents said Musk has too much power within the government, and a mid-February Emerson College one that found 45 percent of respondents disapproved of Musk’s performance—have found more mixed results.
But with 3 million federal government employees, and another 20 million employees in state and local governments who ostensibly fear DOGE-type efforts being replicated elsewhere (not unfounded!), it makes sense that there would be some amount of broad opposition. We all have the luxury of, at present, being insulated from our coming debt crisis, so what incentive do people have to support government auditing efforts? Especially if they themselves are affected, or know someone who is.
Perhaps the best argument against DOGE is that Musk and his team of engineer-savants are playing fast and loose with the numbers (whether accidentally due to sloppiness or deliberately in an effort to garner support), which for an initiative that prides itself on being “maximally transparent” is a little absurd. “DOGE’s website reports a total estimated savings of $55 billion, coming from a combination of canceled and renegotiated contracts and leases, as well as fraud detection, grant cancellations, job cuts and more,” reports Politico. “The ‘wall of receipts’ posted Monday represents only a subset of canceled contracts, the page claims, that amount to approximately 20 percent of ‘overall DOGE savings’ so far.” But these receipts include “contracts that had not yet been awarded; instances where a single pot of money is listed multiple times—tripling or quadrupling the amount of savings claimed; purchase agreements that have no record of being canceled, but were instead stripped of language related to diversity, equity and inclusion; contract savings identified by DOGE that do not match with records they refer to in the Federal Procurement Data System; contracts where the underlying document is for an entirely different contract.”
As I wrote last week, “the progress [Musk] has made so far hasn’t really been good enough or fast enough to meet his goal [of ideally slashing $2 trillion, or at least $1 trillion]. The headline number is $55 billion; that’s what Musk and DOGE claim to have saved already with their cuts. But the total for canceled contracts equals about $16.5 billion—half of which came from one single contract cut which had unfortunately been miscounted as $8 billion when it was in fact a contract for merely $8 million. Still, I am sympathetic to the Randy Barnett idea that we can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good here. The pernicious waste within the federal government needs to be rooted out. Nobody ever said that job would be easy or that the messy process would be broadly supported.
What if we’re thinking about government waste all wrong? “Historically, taxes were collected in a few forms: some countries had the kind of economy where there was a tax base that could actually hand over a set quantity of physical coins at some appointed time in order to provide revenue, but in many cases taxes were paid in either goods or labor—a share of the crops, some unpaid labor building a road, etc. The usual term for taxes collected in the form of work is corvée labor, and it’s a sufficiently old and persistent practice that the term comes to English by way of French translations of a
Article from Reason.com
The Reason Magazine website is a go-to destination for libertarians seeking cogent analysis, investigative reporting, and thought-provoking commentary. Championing the principles of individual freedom, limited government, and free markets, the site offers a diverse range of articles, videos, and podcasts that challenge conventional wisdom and advocate for libertarian solutions. Whether you’re interested in politics, culture, or technology, Reason provides a unique lens that prioritizes liberty and rational discourse. It’s an essential resource for those who value critical thinking and nuanced debate in the pursuit of a freer society.
