The vast majority of U.S. voters say that the federal government is corrupt, and most say federal bureaucrats don’t listen to voters as they should.
A whopping 98% of respondents in a recent survey agreed that there is at least some corruption in the federal government. The finding comes amid the work of the fledgling Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to expose and root out waste, fraud, and abuse across the federal government.
“Generally speaking, how much corruption exists in the federal government?” RMG Research asked respondents in a poll conducted on behalf of the Napolitan News Service.
More than two-thirds of respondents (69%) said there is “a lot” of corruption in the federal government, while about a quarter (23%) agreed there is at least “a little.” Some 6% said there is “almost none,” but zero respondents said there is “none.” The remaining 2% said they were “not sure.”
Respondents also said bureaucrats do not pay enough attention to voters.
“Do the leaders of federal agencies pay too much attention to what voters want or too little?” RMG Research asked.
Nearly three quarters (72%) of respondents either said agencies pay “far too little” attention (49%) to voters or “somewhat too little” attention to them (23%).
Fewer respondents said agencies pay “far too much” attention to voters (6%) or “somewhat too much” attention (7%), while 10% said the agencies pay “about the right amount” of attention to them. The final 5% said they weren’t sure.
RMG Research conducted the poll online Thursday, surveying a representative sample of 1,000 registered voters. The margin of error is +/- 3.1 percentage points.
Amid DOGE’s efforts, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has condemned the “insane priorities” that the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department have funded, mentioning “$1.5 million to advance DEI in Serbia’s workplaces, $70,000 for a production of a DEI musical in Ireland, $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia, $32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru.”
Although Congress approves federal spending, the executive branch often handles the specific allocation of funds, and the executive branch falls under the president. President Donald Trump has ordered executive agencies to cease promoting ideological causes described as “woke,” such as Marxist-inspired critical race theory (the view that America is systemically racist despite colorblind civil rights laws), transgender orthodoxy, climate alarmism, and a preference for technocratic government.
While Congress, not the executive branch, has the power to make laws under the Constitution, Congress has increasingly outsourced the making of rules Americans must follow. Each year, this vast bureaucracy issues far more rules than Congress passes laws. In 2023, for example, agencies issued 3,018 rules—which took up an astonishing 89,368 pages in the Federal Register—while Congress enacted 68 laws. Those rules generally have the force of law.
Although the president enjoys authority over the executive branch, according to the plain text of the Constitution, a bevy of civil service regulations often shield bureaucrats from the president’s authority.
While the House of Representatives has to listen to the people because its members get elected every two years, and while the people elect a president every four years, many of the bureaucrats stay in their jobs for decades, and federal government unions make it hard to fire them.
By launching DOGE and issuing executive orders reining in the bureaucracy, President Trump has exposed just how entrenched it is. The unions representing federal employees have filed lawsuits to block Trump’s orders, and some judges have ordered the president not to implement his policies.
Democrats claim DOGE is harming the country, but this poll suggests it has awakened the American people to the gap between voters and bureaucrats.
