Though most Americans think government inefficiency is a major issue, President Donald Trump’s department created to attack the problem is not a popular solution, a new AP-NORC poll found.

Trump tapped tech billionaire Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to head the Department of Government Efficiency, tasking the agency with cutting costs at the federal level. Ramaswamy stepped down from the role in the Trump administration just hours after the inauguration, leaving Musk to lead DOGE on his own.

Sixty-five percent of Americans say government efficiency is an issue, but few said they supported DOGE, and fewer than half of those polled support the department’s head.

Fifty-two percent of Americans, asked ahead of the Jan. 20 inauguration, had an unfavorable view of Musk, while 36% had a favorable view of him, according to the AP-NORC poll released on Jan. 24. And just 29% of Americans said they approved of the creation of DOGE.

When it comes to issues such as corruption, inefficiency and red tape at the government level, most respondents identified these as major issues.

On government inefficiency, 81% of Republicans identified it as a major issue. However, only 58% of Republicans said they supported DOGE. With Democrats, 55% saw government inefficiency as a problem, but only 11% are in favor of DOGE. Those numbers are 61% and 20%, respectively, with independents.

Six in 10 respondents went on to say they disapprove of billionaires advising the president. Just 20% of Republicans said they thought policy advice from billionaires was a good thing, while 44% did not find the idea to be positive or negative, the poll found.

Numbers for Democrats and independents were even lower. Just 8% of Democrats and 7% of independents believe billionaires advising the president is good.

Some of the nation’s most well-known tech billionaires sat in prime seats at the Capitol on Jan. 20 as Trump was sworn into office, including Musk, who runs X, formerly known as Twitter; Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg; Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos; and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, the Associated Press reported.

Though DOGE is tasked with cutting government spending, Americans noted several areas where they believe the government is not spending enough money.

More than half of the respondents said the government isn’t spending enough money on social security, education, assistance to the poor, Medicare and Medicaid, and border security, the poll found.

Republicans, in particular, expressed the majority of support for more spending on social security, education and border security, the poll found.

Democrats are in favor of increased spending on education and assistance to the poor the most. Social security tops the list for independents.

The AP-NORC poll was conducted between Jan. 9-13 with 1,147 adults. There was a margin of error of 3.9 percentage points.

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