It depends on the day and how honest people feel. If it were truly about numbers they would probably find more success in getting their government to spend smarter.
This is proven by looking at the disastrous Trump admin. Who came in thinking "Uh government is so bloated we need to spend smarter and cut waste" and did DOGE for a bit, then quit, and added more money to our deficit and barely saved anything and spent more money hiring back essential people bc they couldn't distinguish essential spend from frivolous spend
There will almost never be a government that does this because the incentives are not there.
There are more incentives in prolonging a problem than there are in solving it.
> Or run for office yourself
Winning an election against career politicians is difficult and next to impossible. There is virtually no way to do this without having backing. As soon as you have backing you have new incentives. The purpose of a career politician and the machine behind them is to win elections. That may or may not involve solving problems that matter to constituents.
A government that gets elected by cutting income taxes? You're right you aren't cut out for politics.