Public Frustrated With Partisan Debt Talks

After months of intensely partisan negotiations meant to achieve an agreement to reduce the nation’s debt, the timid result has left a bad taste in the mouths of Americans, recent polling shows.
Public Frustrated With Partisan Debt Talks
Andrea Hayley
8/7/2011
Updated:
10/1/2015

<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/120425053.jpg" alt="People stand outside the White House on August 5, 2011. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)" title="People stand outside the White House on August 5, 2011. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)" width="575" class="size-medium wp-image-1799673"/></a>
People stand outside the White House on August 5, 2011. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)

After months of intensely partisan negotiations meant to achieve an agreement to reduce the nation’s debt, the timid result has left a bad taste in the mouths of Americans, recent polling shows.

According to a Rasmussen poll published Aug. 4, 62 percent of likely voters would replace the entire Congress if they could. Polling shows that voters are extremely frustrated with the way Congress handled negotiations required to avert a government default of its debt obligations.

The day prior to an 11th-hour debt-reducing final agreement, a CNN poll found 84 percent of Americans disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job. The dismal approval rating of just 14 percent marked a historic low for CNN pollsters. 

A Pew Research Center/Washington Post poll released Aug. 1, found nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of Americans described the debt negotiations in negative terms. “Ridiculous,” “disgusting,” and “stupid” topped the list of descriptors. Other adjectives, such as frustrating, childish, disappointing, poor, joke, messy, idiotic, crazy, disgrace, stinks, pathetic, and outrageous, came up frequently. 

The negative views were shared nearly equally among Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, the poll found.

Lawmakers, including the president, all saw their approval ratings decline as a result of the tough negotiations. In the end, the country’s spending limit was raised in exchange for $1 trillion in spending cuts, and an agreement to force another $1.5 trillion in cuts within the next 10 years. 

The public views the deal unfavorably, with greater than two to one believing it will worsen the economy, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken hours after the president signed the deal on Aug. 2. 

Among key negotiators, Obama came out with the best approval rating. A minority, 41 percent of Americans approved of the way the president handled the negotiations. 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had a 23 percent approval rating and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has a 31 percent approval rating, 

In a press briefing given after the Senate passed the deal and cleared its path to the president’s desk, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said, “I think that the American people rightfully were appalled by some of what they saw.” 

“There are a lot of reasons why Americans may have lost a little bit of faith in the process here in Washington as they watched what for much of the time seemed like a circus that wasn’t producing anything but stalemate,” Carney added.

All along, the president called for a “balanced approach” to the deficit problem, with an agreement that would include a mix of spending cuts and revenue (or tax) increases. Republican negotiators held fast to a position of rejecting tax increases of any kind. 

In the end, the deal was limited to spending cuts only, with further negotiation by a select committee to work out further details by November of this year. 

In a statement, the president characterized the debate as “long and contentious,” but claimed that lawmakers “put politics aside to work together for the good of the country.” 

Speaker Boehner, a stalwart for the Republican negotiating position, claimed victory on his website for gaining agreement on spending cuts larger than the $2.5 trillion increase in the nation’s debt ceiling that became part of the deal. 

“They said it couldn’t be done,” they said it was “impossible,” but it is “on track to become law,” reads a statement on his official website. 

Both Obama and Boehner have claimed victory on behalf of the American people.

Reporting on the business of food, food tech, and Silicon Alley, I studied the Humanities as an undergraduate, and obtained a Master of Arts in business journalism from Columbia University. I love covering the people, and the passion, that animates innovation in America. Email me at andrea dot hayley at epochtimes.com
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