(Yahoo)– The solid armor of President Barack Obama's popularity may have a crack — a nearly $2 trillion-sized one.
There's continued and considerable public restiveness over eye-popping federal budget deficits, a potential danger for both Obama's ambitious agenda and his political fortunes.
About $1.3 trillion when Obama took office, this year's deficit now is on track to soar to a record $1.85 trillion after his massive influx of federal spending to stimulate the moribund economy, help struggling homeowners, stabilize frozen credit markets and bail out troubled banks, automakers and insurers.
With those actions, Obama has greatly expanded the government's reach — and, polls say, stoked people's concerns.
The nonpartisan Pew Research Center reported Thursday that a majority of Americans — 55 percent — are optimistic that Obama will eventually reduce the budget deficit. But that's a smaller slice than the 61 percent of people who approve of him generally.
And according to a new New York Times/CBS News poll, 60 percent of Americans don't believe the president has a strategy for dealing with the deficit.
Also, 58 percent in an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll want Obama to make controlling the deficit a higher priority than a speedy economic recovery. And, nearly half expressed a "great deal" of concern about the increase of government intervention in American life that Obama has overseen, from taking over companies to influencing corporate bonuses and seeking to add government-sponsored insurance to the health care system.
Those growing more wary are mostly political independents, the fickle swing voters who decide close elections. They were critical to the winning coalition Obama assembled last fall and certainly will be critical again if he runs in 2012.
In the nearer term, if voters turn on Obama, it could threaten the Democrats' comfortable majority in Congress and make it difficult for the president to secure approval for his ambitious proposals to overhaul health care,
No comments:
Post a Comment