Business
Americans Say Government Is Corrupt and Inefficient but Are Lukewarm About DOGE
Democrats seem willing to tolerate a lot to get a larger government, but Republicans aren’t much better
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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From LifeSiteNews
Saskatchewan has become the first Canadian province to free itself entirely of the carbon tax.
On March 27, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe announced the removal of the provincial industrial carbon tax beginning April 1, boosting the province’s industry and making Saskatchewan the first carbon tax free province.
Under Moe’s direction, Saskatchewan has dropped the industrial carbon tax which he says will allow Saskatchewan to thrive under a “tariff environment.”
“I would hope that all of the parties running in the federal election would agree with those objectives and allow the provinces to regulate in this area without imposing the federal backstop,” he continued.
The removal of the tax is estimated to save Saskatchewan residents up to 18 cents a liter in gas prices.
The removal of the tax will take place on April 1, the same day the consumer carbon tax will reduce to 0 percent under Prime Minister Mark Carney’s direction. Notably, Carney did not scrap the carbon tax legislation: he just reduced its current rate to zero. This means it could come back at any time.
Furthermore, while Carney has dropped the consumer carbon tax, he has previously revealed that he wishes to implement a corporation carbon tax, the effects of which many argued would trickle down to all Canadians.
The Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM) celebrated Moe’s move, noting that the carbon tax was especially difficult on farmers.
“I think the carbon tax has been in place for approximately six years now coming up in April and the cost keeps going up every year,” SARM president Bill Huber said.
“It puts our farming community and our business people in rural municipalities at a competitive disadvantage, having to pay this and compete on the world stage,” he continued.
“We’ve got a carbon tax on power — and that’s going to be gone now — and propane and natural gas and we use them more and more every year, with grain drying and different things in our farming operations,” he explained.
“I know most producers that have grain drying systems have three-phase power. If they haven’t got natural gas, they have propane to fire those dryers. And that cost goes on and on at a high level, and it’s made us more noncompetitive on a world stage,” Huber decalred.
The carbon tax is wildly unpopular and blamed for the rising cost of living throughout Canada. Currently, Canadians living in provinces under the federal carbon pricing scheme pay $80 per tonne.
From the Fraser Institute
The electric car is widely seen as a symbol of a simple, clean solution to climate change. In reality, it’s inefficient, reliant on massive subsidies, and leaves behind a trail of pollution and death that is seldom acknowledged.
We are constantly reminded by climate activists and politicians that electric cars are cleaner, cheaper, and better. Canada and many other countries have promised to prohibit the sale of new gas and diesel cars within a decade. But if electric cars are really so good, why would we need to ban the alternatives?
And why has Canada needed to subsidize each electric car with a minimum $5,000 from the federal government and more from provincial governments to get them bought? Many people are not sold on the idea of an electric car because they worry about having to plan out where and when to recharge. They don’t want to wait for an uncomfortable amount of time while recharging; they don’t want to pay significantly more for the electric car and then see its used-car value decline much faster. For people not privileged to own their own house, recharging is a real challenge. Surveys show that only 15 per cent of Canadians and 11 per cent of Americans want to buy an electric car.
The main environmental selling point of an electric car is that it doesn’t pollute. It is true that its engine doesn’t produce any CO₂ while driving, but it still emits carbon in other ways. Manufacturing the car generates emissions—especially producing the battery which requires a large amount of energy, mostly achieved with coal in China. So even when an electric car is being recharged with clean power in BC, over its lifetime it will emit about one-third of an equivalent gasoline car. When recharged in Alberta, it will emit almost three-quarters.
In some parts of the world, like India, so much of the power comes from coal that electric cars end up emitting more CO₂ than gasoline cars. Across the world, on average, the International Energy Agency estimates that an electric car using the global average mix of power sources over its lifetime will emit nearly half as much CO₂ as a gasoline-driven car, saving about 22 tonnes of CO₂.
But using an electric car to cut emissions is incredibly ineffective. On America’s longest-established carbon trading system, you could buy 22 tonnes of carbon emission cuts for about $660 (US$460). Yet, Ottawa is subsidizing every electric car to the tune of $5,000 or nearly ten times as much, which increases even more if provincial subsidies are included. And since about half of those electrical vehicles would have been bought anyway, it is likely that Canada has spent nearly twenty-times too much cutting CO₂ with electric cars than it could have. To put it differently, Canada could have cut twenty-times more CO₂ for the same amount of money.
Moreover, all these estimates assume that electric cars are driven as far as gasoline cars. They are not. In the US, nine-in-ten households with an electric car actually have one, two or more non-electric cars, with most including an SUV, truck or minivan. Moreover, the electric car is usually driven less than half as much as the other vehicles, which means the CO₂ emission reduction is much smaller. Subsidized electric cars are typically a ‘second’ car for rich people to show off their environmental credentials.
Electric cars are also 320–440 kilograms heavier than equivalent gasoline cars because of their enormous batteries. This means they will wear down roads faster, and cost societies more. They will also cause more air pollution by shredding more particulates from tire and road wear along with their brakes. Now, gasoline cars also pollute through combustion, but electric cars in total pollute more, both from tire and road wear and from forcing more power stations online, often the most polluting ones. The latest meta-study shows that overall electric cars are worse on particulate air pollution. Another study found that in two-thirds of US states, electric cars cause more of the most dangerous particulate air pollution than gasoline-powered cars.
These heavy electric cars are also more dangerous when involved in accidents, because heavy cars more often kill the other party. A study in Nature shows that in total, heavier electric cars will cause so many more deaths that the toll could outweigh the total climate benefits from reduced CO₂ emissions.
Many pundits suggest electric car sales will dominate gasoline cars within a few decades, but the reality is starkly different. A 2023-estimate from the Biden Administration shows that even in 2050, more than two-thirds of all cars globally will still be powered by gas or diesel.
Source: US Energy Information Administration, reference scenario, October 2023
Fossil fuel cars, vast majority is gasoline, also some diesel, all light duty vehicles, the remaining % is mostly LPG.
Electric vehicles will only take over when innovation has made them better and cheaper for real. For now, electric cars run not mostly on electricity but on bad policy and subsidies, costing hundreds of billions of dollars, blocking consumers from choosing the cars they want, and achieving virtually nothing for climate change.
Bjørn Lomborg
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