Americans Believe Government Wastes Half Of Money It Spends

How could the federal government waste over 50% of the money it spends? Where could it possibly go?

A new Gallup poll shows that “Americans estimate that the federal government wastes 51 cents of every dollar it spends, a new high in a Gallup trend question first asked in 1979.”

The data does not point to which programs people think are most wasteful, and that make the poll barely useful.

Methodology: Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Sept. 8-11, 2011, with a random sample of 1,017 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

Douglas A. McIntyre