only 25% said yes. >> the government is too big. it has grown too fast. it doesn't do anything well. >> reporter: the huge percentage of government workers deemed non-essential in many agencies suggests to some that there's plenty of fat to trim, especially given that many of its functions are automated. >> unlike local governments that have a lot of useful services, like fire and police and k-12 schools, the federal government is mainly just a giant cash transfer machine. it taxes people, then computers send the checks out the door through programs like social security and medicare. >> reporter: take the department of agriculture, for example. it employs roughly 99,000 people to service the roughly 1.4 million americans employed in farms. >> there's an old joke that agriculture employee walked into his colleague's office and said, what's the matter? and he said, i'm really upset my farmer died. it's not quite a 1-to-1 ratio, but it is still a much larger