When Barack Obama took office four years ago, reducing the budget deficit was a middle-tier item on the public’s agenda. Only about half of Americans (53%) viewed it as a top policy priority in January 2009, placing it ninth on a list of 20 policy goals. But as Obama begins […] Read more »
Bipartisan Support For Creating State Insurance Exchanges Despite Continuing Party Divisions Over the ACA
A majority of Americans put the creation of state-based health insurance exchanges at the top of the priority list for health policy in their state this year, according to a survey released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health. […] Read more »
U.S. Budget Discord Is Top Threat to Global Economy in Poll
Global investors say the state of the U.S. government’s finances is the greatest risk to the world economy and almost half are curbing their investments in response to continuing budget battles, a Bloomberg poll shows. … Even with stocks at a five-year high, almost half of investors — 47 percent […] Read more »
Fox News poll: 83 percent think government spending is out of control
More than eight in ten American voters (83 percent) think government spending is out of control, according to a Fox News poll released Friday. That’s up from 78 percent who said so in 2010 and 62 percent in 2009. Some 11 percent think spending is being managed carefully. [cont.] Dana […] Read more »
Most see damage if US debt limit not raised
Most Americans think jarring economic problems will erupt if lawmakers fail to increase the government’s borrowing limit. Yet they’re torn over how or even whether to raise it, leaning toward Republican demands that any boost be accompanied by spending cuts. According to an Associated Press-GfK poll, 53 percent say that […] Read more »
Do Americans Trust Government Less Because It’s Become an Insurance Broker?
At the end of an interesting and data-packed post on the growth in federal spending, Nate Silver offers a hypothesis. … Nate suggests that the growth in spending on social insurance is changing what government does and perhaps making people trust the government less. The former is undoubtedly true. I […] Read more »