Sixty-four percent of Americans are against the federal government’s taking steps to enforce federal anti-marijuana laws in states where marijuana is legal. Americans who personally believe that marijuana should be legal overwhelmingly say the federal government should not get involved at the state level, along with four in 10 of […] Read more »
Stop guessing whether a bill will work. Instead, let’s test it.
… Each year, hundreds of carefully controlled, double-blind studies are done to learn whether a given pill is better than a placebo or whether a new surgery leads to quicker recoveries. Many of these studies are funded by a single agency, the National Institutes of Health. By contrast, in a […] Read more »
Permanent Gridlock
… President Obama claims a mandate to raise taxes on the wealthy to reduce the deficit. Does the evidence back up that claim? Perhaps—it just depends on what evidence you are looking at. Some 60 percent of voters said that tax rates should either be “increased for all” or “increased […] Read more »
Though More Optimistic, Americans Are Still Sharply Divided
After a campaign season of unprecedented expense and duration, taming the federal deficit and avoiding the fiscal cliff top the public’s To Do list for President Obama and Congress, the latest Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll has found. But in contrast to Washington’s nearly exclusive focus on the budgetary standoff, […] Read more »
Approaching the cliff
Voters often approach policy issues from a very different angle than do Washington elites. So it is with the fiscal cliff. Everyone thinks the debt and deficit are serious. Everyone thinks the problem should be fixed. The differences emerge on the “how.” While Washington fixates on which programs to cut […] Read more »
Poll Shows Ambivalence on Fiscal Cliff, Support for Rice
As the White House and congressional Republicans try to keep the nation from going over the so-called fiscal cliff, a new survey finds that the public is amenable to raising taxes on wealthier Americans and as averse as ever to cutting entitlement programs. [cont.] Matthew Cooper, National Journal Recent polls: […] Read more »