Despite faux fanfare and outrage, DOGE hasn't even scratched the...

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

66% : Stop focusing on flashy "spending cut theater" targets and dig into the hard work of reforming entitlement payment systems, defense contract overruns and program duplication.
60% : Otherwise, Trump supporters may be surprised at the end of the year when -- after all the tweets, promises and headlines -- spending and deficits have sharply climbed again.
58% : Many of my fellow fiscal conservatives cheered President Trump's executive order establishing the "Department of Government Efficiency," headed by billionaire businessman Elon Musk.
57% : For context, federal spending had already been set to rise by $278 billion this year.
54% : Indeed, as the author of hundreds of reports and articles showing how to reduce federal spending and deficits, I was cautiously hopeful that Musk would follow the language of the executive order to "moderniz[e]
50% : So while Musk's target savings have fallen from $2 trillion annually, to $1 trillion and now $150 billion, its "wall of receipts" has verified just $2 billion of savings -- or 1/35 of 1 percent of federal spending.
45% : The political waters will grow more treacherous when it moves to spending that Republican voters support, such as Social Security, Medicare, defense, veterans' benefits, border spending and infrastructure.
44% : Such non-ideological savings reforms will have the added benefit of likely winning congressional approval, making them fully legal and sustainable.
38% : Three-quarters of all federal spending goes to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense, veterans and interest, and the final quarter includes priorities such as infrastructure, justice, border security, national parks, unemployment benefits, disaster aid and disability benefits.
26% : Trump has already taken much of this spending off the table for cuts, and Congress is highly unlikely to gut these functions.
16% : It would address $100 billion in payment errors across Medicaid, Medicare and unemployment benefits.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.