55% Say Obama’s Budget Doesn’t Cut Enough

55% Say Obama’s Budget Doesn’t Cut Enough
Wednesday, February 16/Rasmussen Reports

Most voters don’t think President Obama’s proposed $3.7 trillion federal budget includes enough spending cuts, and despite House Republican plans to cut substantially more, a plurality of voters don’t think the GOP goes far enough either.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 55% of Likely U.S. Voters say, generally speaking, that the president’s budget proposal cuts government spending too little. Ten percent (10%) say it cuts too much, while 26% say his budget cuts about the right amount. (To see survey question wording, click here).

While congressional Republicans are criticizing the president for not cutting enough and are planning much bigger budget cuts, 40% of voters say, generally speaking, that the changes proposed by the GOP also cut government spending too little. Twenty-eight percent (28%) say Republicans want to cut too much, while 18% think their planned budget cuts are about right. Fourteen percent (14%) are not sure.

Republican voters are even more critical of the legislators from their own party. Fifty-one percent (51%) of Republicans say the changes proposed by congressional Republicans cut too little, a view shared by 41% of voters not affiliated with either of the major political parties. Forty-six percent (46%) of Democrats think the GOP wants to cut too much.
The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on February 14-15, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

As they have for years, most voters continue to feel that cutting taxes and reducing government spending are best for the economy. But only 60% of Americans recognize that 1954 was the last year that overall government spending declined from one year to the next.

Eighty-three percent (83%) of voters say they have been following recent news stories about the president’s 2012 budget which was made public on Monday. That includes 43% who say they have been following Very Closely.

Seventy-nine percent (79%) of Republicans and 59% of unaffiliated voters say the president’s proposed budget cuts too little. A plurality (49%) of Democrats says the planned cuts are about right.

Conservatives overwhelmingly think Obama’s budget cuts too little, and most say the same of planned GOP spending cuts. The majority of liberals say the president’s proposed cuts are about right but say planned Republican budget cutting is too much.

Sixty-six percent (66%) of Mainstream voters say the president’s budget doesn’t cut spending enough, while 81% of the Political Class think the proposed cuts are about right. Nearly half (48%) of those in the Mainstream also think Republicans are planning to cut too little, while Political Class voters are evenly divided on the question.

Despite talk from congressional Republicans and the president’s State of the Union comments about debt reduction, 54% of voters think Congress is unlikely to make major spending cuts in the near future. Even though Republicans have taken over the House, voters still expect government spending, taxes and the deficit to go up over the next two years.

Fifty percent (50%) of voters oppose the new spending in areas like education, transportation and technological innovation that the president proposed in his State of the Union address. Forty-one percent (41%) support it.

By a 57% to 28% margin, voters believe that cutting government spending would do more to create jobs than building a high-speed rail network which is one of the president’s proposals.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/federal_budget/february_2011/55_say_obama_s_budget_doesn_t_cut_enough