Musk’s chainsaw could hobble federal surveys. That’s worse than you think.
Efficiently distributing government money often requires collecting data from Americans.
For my National Journal column this week, I focused on a not really immediate, but incredibly consequential, problem that could emerge from Elon Musk and DOGE’s cuts to federal government projects and staff: Damage to federal surveys.
We need federal surveys and the experts who run them to gather data that informs a whole host of policies and funding priorities. I discussed just a few of them in the column.
To be clear - there are obviously problems with all of the indiscriminate firings happening across the government, and the cuts are threatening many, many programs that are vital to providing services. I’m writing about federal surveys because survey research is my thing - and because I think most people would roll their eyes at spending millions on surveys simply because they don’t know the value of the data.
All the dedicated federal workers being threatened and indiscriminately fired deserve support.
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P.S. I don’t think anyone disputes that there is waste in government. But the chainsaw is not the way to fix it. Actually knowing what people do and studying programs to see what is working and not is the responsible way to do it.