Poll: Americans want compromise over debt ceiling
By Sarah Dutton, Jennifer De Pinto, Anthony Salvanto, Fred Backus and Stephanie Condon
As lawmakers continue to negotiate over the debt ceiling and spending cuts, a new CBS News/New York Times poll shows that Americans overwhelmingly want Congress to raise the debt ceiling. Most would like to see spending cuts go along with that increase.
Three-quarters, or 77 percent, of Americans want the debt ceiling raised, according to the poll, conducted Jan. 11-15. The Treasury Department has informed Congress that the United States is expected to hit its current debt limit of $16.4 trillion by mid-February or March. If Congress fails to raise the nation's borrowing limit, it could have severe economic consequences.
The Republican-led House will next week vote on a bill to raise the debt limit for about three months, giving the House and Senate time to pass a federal budget. If either chamber failed to pass a budget in that timeframe, its members wouldn't get paid under the GOP plan. It's unclear whether the Democratic-led Senate will go along with this plan.
CBS/NYT
According to the poll, 60 percent of Americans want the debt ceiling raised with spending cuts. Another 17 percent want it raised without any conditions, while 18 percent say it should not be raised at all.
Americans would rather see compromise than default. Seventy-three percent would prefer a debt ceiling agreement that they didn't fully support over seeing the U.S. stop paying its obligations. While Republicans are most likely to accept default, only one-fourth want that to happen.
And if Americans are willing to settle, they'd like to see Congress do the same. Eighty-four percent said President Obama and Democrats should compromise, while 80 percent said congressional Republicans should.
The 113th Congress
Americans harbor doubts about what this next Congress will achieve, as they did just after the 2010 midterm elections, and the recent "fiscal cliff" battle hasn't helped matters. Because of it, 46 percent of Americans say they're more pessimistic about the ability of Congress to deal with the nation's problems.
More Americans (47 percent) blame the Republicans in Congress for the difficulties in reaching an agreement on the "fiscal cliff" deadline than blame Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Congress (31 percent). Another 15 percent of Americans blame both sides. There are partisan differences, with independents blaming the Republicans more.
Overall, just 38 percent expect the new Congress to accomplish more than it usually does in a typical two-year period, while slightly more, 43 percent, expect it to accomplish less. Expectations for Congress were more positive just after the 1994, 1996, and 2006 elections.
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Expectations for Congress are lowest among rank-and-file Republicans: just 31 percent expect it to accomplish more than usual in the next two years, compared to 44 percent of Democrats.
More Americans trust Mr. Obama than Republicans in Congress to handle all three issues tested in this poll -- the economy, the budget deficit and taxes.
Congress continues to receive low approval ratings from the American public. Four in five disapprove of the job Congress is doing, and just 12 percent approve. Disapproval transcends partisanship, too. Eighty-two percent of Republicans and 86 percent of Democrats disapprove of Congress.
Criticism extends to both parties in Congress, although congressional Democrats fare slightly better than Republicans. It's noteworthy that just 30 percent of Republicans approve of how the Republicans in Congress are doing their job. Democrats are twice as likely to approve of their own party's job in Congress.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has just a 29 percent approval rating, as does House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. About a quarter of Americans don't have an opinion of the job they are each doing.
Thinking more broadly about how to approach the federal deficit as Congress wrestles with budgetary issues, Americans favor a combination of taxes and spending cuts to reduce the deficit.
And a majority says that in principle, they would be willing to cut programs that personally benefit them - though Democrats are less willing to sacrifice than Republicans and independents.
Partisans also differ on what to cut. From a list of the largest budget items, Democrats tend to favor military cuts; Republicans look to Medicare. Neither side wants to trim Social Security. One in 10 wouldn't cut any of these programs.
For the full poll results, see next page
This poll was conducted by telephone from January 11-15, 2013 among 1,110 adults nationwide. Phone numbers were dialed from samples of both standard land-line and cell phones. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The error for subgroups may be higher. This poll release conforms to the Standards of Disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.
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It was at least part way toward a balanced budget, was not so onerous, and was already agreed upon.
Liberals know that if you nearly double food stamps AND ramp up the welfare rolls AND give people free phones AND service AND offer illegal aliens children -a free education AND free Birth medical care in a U.S. hospital AND anchor babies AND then manage to get about 69% of All Americans drawing some from of freebie benefits from the 'gobmint' AND borrow 6 trillion over a few short years AND add more to the debt than existed from 1776 until about 2004 to give those freebies out ....THEN it's not at all suprising that 51% of the people are gonna vote for Santa Claus.
The free phones are enough alone ! Gee if I vote for a Conservative I might not have me no free cell phone ?
I mean WHO do you think the parasite class - who pay no income tax - are going to vote for ...the guy who says they must be self-reliant , support themselves and their families and not expect a handout and not be a baby-momma OR the guy who gives them all the "rich white boy's money" and gifts them with 2 years of free unemployment retirement and expands food stamps, welfare and every social - giveaway that he possibly can!
Well Doh ! Bribery works in todays America - just dangle the Golden Goose of rich white guys in front of them and 70-95% of the minorities won't even care what happens after the Goose is cooked ! Obama has ramped up the race game to his advantage using greed and division.
I have never seen so much bulls**t in one article.
It would be impossible to determine the percentage of the hundreds of millions of Americans living in the US.
"About 25% of Americans had no opinion on how they were doing".
This 25% must consist of people who only breathe once every four (4) minutes.!
Again; pure unadulterated bulls**t.!!
CBS and the New York Times evidently think most Americans are as dumb as a box of rocks.!
I suggest:
*Stop sending billions in foreign aid to countries who are our enemies.
*Bring our troops home from Afghanistan; ALL OF THEM.
*Instead of "buying" ANYTHING from foreign countries; I suggest we start using a "trade" system.
ex: x number of bushels of wheat for X number of barrels of oil.
The national debt is over $17 TRILLION dollars.
How much of this debt can be attributed to the cost of the wars, how much to bail out Wall Street and big business, oil companies and big banks, how much actual money given to foreign countries with absolutely no oversight.??
The list goes on and on.
We need a government in these United States who is going to put Americans FIRST.!
This is what Americans really want.!
Stop foreclosing on our homes by those who are guilty of outright criminal business practices, the same criminals who are actually guilty of deliberately setting up the circumstances that caused the housing crisis up to begin with.
Stop bailing out manufacturers whose business practices got them into this mess in the first place.
Stop bailing out unions who pay their workers $80 per hour (including benefits) in industries that are now largely mechanized.
Take notice that no Congressman or Senator has been asked to take a 10% or 20% cut in pay in order to keep the government solvent; or be able to keep the government in business so people will not lose their jobs as they do in private businesses.!!
One family owned business is actually being fined for being able to not only continue to run their business for the last four years; but has been able to keep all of their employees, give them raises and actually been able to hire additional employees.
Somebody tell me why we can't do the same thing in government.??
I already know the answer, but try to tell that to a politician and see what kind of reception you get.!
These criminal fat-cats do no want to hear any of this, because to follw this type of advice would diminish the power and control they have over the American people.
To: CBS and the New York times
The next time you want to take a poll; have it run by an independent agency and do not have such a pithy number of people take part in it.!
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You are delusional. SS and Medicare is not covered by the payroll tax. That is why we have to borrow money to pay for it.
So, stop saying "entitlement"!!! The only problem is Feds changed the law to allow them to use the money - another disappearing fund managed by Feds. Originally, Feds couldn't touch the money, but ...