Hey Congress: When It Comes to the Stimulus, Please Listen to Your Constituents!
The polling group Rasmussen is reporting a serious slide in support for the various stimuli efforts afoot:
Fifty percent (50%) of U.S. voters say the final economic recovery plan that emerges from Congress is at least somewhat likely to make things worse rather than better, but 39% say such an outcome is not likely.
Lord love the American people (at least as captured by this telephone survey of 1,000 likely voters):
Part of this concern is a natural reflection of voter skepticism about the legislative process. Many Americans simply accept the notion that no matter how bad things are, Congress could make them worse. Most voters currently rate Congress' performance as poor, and most expect that lobbyists will have more influence on the legislation than voters or the president. When reacting to the economic downturn, 46% of Americans remain more concerned that the government will do too much while 41% worry it will do too little.
And then there's this truly heartening development:
Support for the economic recovery plan working its way through Congress has fallen again this week. For the first time, a plurality of voters nationwide oppose the $800-billion-plus plan.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 37% favor the legislation, 43% are opposed, and 20% are not sure.
Two weeks ago, 45% supported the plan. Last week, 42% supported it.
More on that here. There's a new Gallup Poll floating around too that finds only 38 percent of Americans want the stimulus plan passed as currently conceived.
There's a reason that President Obama and the Dems in Congress were pushing this thing faster than Monica Lewinsky carrying a pizza pie: The more people have time to think and reflect on the details of the stimulus package (which is clearly loaded with more pork than a can of SPAM and heavy on spending circa 2011), the more likely they will be to question its goals and efficacy.
Score one for the American people. Now let's just hope our representative government is feeling at least kinda-sorta representative. Or at least kinda-sorta intelligent: Seriously, if you're going to wreck or re-engineer the entire U.S. economy, take more than a coupla weeks to hash things out.
For a Reason- and John Holmes-approved stimulus plan, just click below:
