Do Americans Support Larger Budget Cuts Over Federal Government Shutdown?
Sunshine State News's blog | Posted: April 1, 2011 3:20 PM
A majority of American voters say they are OK with a partial federal government shutdown if it will lead to greater cuts in spending.
A national survey released Friday reports
57 percent of likely U.S. voters value greater cuts in the 2011 federal budget more than avoiding a shutdown. Thirty-one percent believe keeping the engines running is of greater importance. Twelve percent were undecided
A new Rasmussen poll comes to us the same day President Barack Obama called out Congress over its continued budget wrangling.
“It would be the height of irresponsibility to halt our economic momentum because of the same old Washington politics,” said Obama, while visiting a UPS facility in Maryland, Politico reports. “The American people don’t want us to go to our respective corners and have the same battles we’ve been having for decades.”
The poll shows almost no change in Americans’ attitudes toward spending cuts. Last month, 58 percent of voters said a partial government shutdown would be preferable to keeping spending at current levels.
Until now, Congress has dodged the bullet by approving piecemeal, stopgap budget measures, but several GOP members, including Florida’s U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, say they will no longer vote for these measures.
This week, Rubio also said he would not support raising the debt ceiling.
Rubio asserted, “We have an unsustainable national debt. Leaders of both parties have grown our government for decades by spending money we didn't have. To pay for it, they borrowed $4 billion a day, leaving us with today's $14 trillion debt. Half of that debt is held by foreign investors, mostly China. And there is no plan to stop.”
The poll surveyed 1,000 likely voters on March 30-31 with a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points.
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:thumbsup: 
