Poll shows support for Democrats' goals [an Associated Press-AOL News poll found........]

Yahoo ^

[Sub-Driver]

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press Writer 27 minutes ago

People overwhelmingly support two of the Democrats' top goals — increasing the minimum wage and making it easier to buy prescription drugs from other countries — as the party takes control of Congress for the first time in a dozen years.

By a smaller margin, the public also favors relaxing restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, a third issue Democrats have promised to tackle during their first 100 hours in charge.

The jury is out on incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Most people say they do not know enough yet to have an opinion about the California Democrat who will be the first woman in that office, an Associated Press-AOL News poll found.

The survey results come as the 110th Congress is set to convene Thursday at noon. Voters last November toppled Republican majorities in both the Senate and House, exasperated by investigations into the ethics of GOP lawmakers and unhappy with the war in Iraq.

Democrats will hold a 233-202 edge in the House and will control the Senate by 51-49.

A boost to the $5.15-an-hour federal minimum wage would be the first since 1997. Democratic leaders have proposed raising it in stages to $7.25 an hour. President Bush has said he supports the idea, along with help for small businesses.

Fully 80 percent of survey respondents favor an increase, too.

Support is strongest among Democrats, 91 percent, while 65 percent of Republicans back the idea. Women, men without college degrees and single women all are especially likely to favor a minimum wage hike.

Nearly seven of 10 adults, 69 percent, favor the government taking steps to make it easier for people to buy prescription drugs from other countries,

[Prokopton]

"It is an unfortunate reality that to protect their intellectual property pharmaceutical companies have to subsidize the socialist healthcare systems of other countries."

This is the greatest fallacy, of many, in your argument. Pharmaceutical companies are not subsidizing the socialist health care systems of other countries, WE ARE!
So you think its reasonable that because Canada will not pay more for their drugs we must? Why shouldn't the U.S. tell the pharmaceutical companies that we are the ones who will not pay more for their drugs. Why not tell them that if they want more money they can ask the Canadians to pay more. After all, we buy much more prescription drugs than Canada so, if market forces were allowed to work, we would have more clout.
No, the apologists for the gouging of Americans, for the sake of corporate profits, can't sell their illogic to other countries and they can't sell it to the American people.
Get the government out of the way and encourage competition among companies as suppliers and among countries as customers. The companies will always charge enough to make a profit and the price of their products will be equalized among their customers but with an edge to those who consume more. That's the free market. What the present system does, and what you propose, is for our government to act as a socialist government so as to support other socialist governments.
That Republicans support such a system is pathetic.

BTW, your predictions of what would happen to our health care if market forces were allowed to work without government interference is so silly it's laughable.
Get out of the bed of the liberals and socialist and focus on free enterprise working for the good of U.S. citizens, not our government controlling markets for the good of foreigners.