Posted on 04/21/2011 7:44:38 PM PDT by neverdem
CBS News Poll analysis by the CBS News Polling Unit: Sarah Dutton, Jennifer De Pinto, Fred Backus and Anthony Salvanto.
Despite Obama administration warnings that failing to do so would devastate the economy, a clear majority of Americans say they oppose raising the debt limit, a new CBS News/New York Times poll shows.
Just 27 percent of Americans support raising the debt limit, while 63 percent oppose raising it.
Eighty-three percent of Republicans oppose raising the limit, along with 64 percent of independents and 48 percent of Democrats. Support for raising the debt limit is just 36 percent among Democrats, and only 14 percent among Republicans.
Seven in ten who oppose raising the debt limit stand by that position even if it means that interest rates will go up.
Poll: Approval ratings for Obama, Congress dip
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has notified Congress that they will need to raise the debt limit from the current $14.3 trillion level in mid-May to early July for the United States to meet its current fiscal obligations.
Republicans, who control the House of Representatives, are demanding spending cuts in exchange for their votes to raise the debt ceiling. They seized on the recent Standard & Poor's warning that it could eventually lower its rating on U.S. debt "a wake-up call to those in Washington asking Congress to blindly increase the debt limit," in the words of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.
If the debt limit is not raised, the United States will default on its bonds for the first time in history. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has suggested not raising it would be "a catastrophic folly."
Poll: One in four Americans think Obama was not born in U.S.
Mr. Obama actually voted against raising the debt limit when he was a senator, a decision the White House says he now regrets. In past years, Congress has regularly voted to increase the debt limit - though voting to do so has usually fallen to the party in power.
In addition to potentially increasing interest rates, a failure to raise the debt limit could delay for Social Security and Medicare checks ties to the government's inability to make payments to agencies. It would also mean the shutdown of much of the government.
While Republicans leaders are reportedly acknowledging behind closed doors that they will not let the United States fall into default, they are considering demanding everything from a balanced budget amendment to statutory spending caps to a 2/3rds voting requirement to increase taxes.
Even if the budget proposal passed by House Republicans were to become law, Congress would still need to raise the debt limit, since the Ryan plan steadily increases the debt over the next decade. Only a budget that eliminates - not reduces - the yearly budget deficit would halt the increase in the debt.
Poll: Most Americans say Medicare is worth the cost
Poll: GOP's 2012 contenders unknown, unloved
PDF: Read the complete poll results
Is the Speaker of the House paying attention?
He might need a tissue.
True story
He will raise the limit. He will claim he was forced to. What a scam.
Who cares what they think? /s
These numbers are the same issue after issue 60% or more against, 40% or less for and it doesn’t matter one damn bit!!!
Well most also opposed Osamacare, but we all know how that one turned out...
Don’t raise the debt ceiling, lower the spending floor. Defund all the collectivist’s collectives. The eagle $oar$ again.
Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they’ve passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
“Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed.
Ayn Rand
Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter — by peaceful or revolutionary means — into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it.
Woe to the nation when this latter purpose prevails among the mass victims of lawful plunder when they, in turn, seize the power to make laws! Until that happens, the few practice lawful plunder upon the many, a common practice where the right to participate in the making of law is limited to a few persons. But then, participation in the making of law becomes universal. And then, men seek to balance their conflicting interests by universal plunder. Instead of rooting out the injustices found in society, they make these injustices general. As soon as the plundered classes gain political power, they establish a system of reprisals against other classes. They do not abolish legal plunder. (This objective would demand more enlightenment than they possess.) Instead, they emulate their evil predecessors by participating in this legal plunder, even though it is against their own interests.
It is as if it were necessary, before a reign of justice appears, for everyone to suffer a cruel retribution — some for their evilness, and some for their lack of understanding.
It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.
Frederic Bastiat
The House and Senate especially the GOP are not listening to the American people. The election in November was a mandate to stop spending and cut the size of government. So far its been a major fricking disappointment.
The GOP is buying into the the whiny butt Democrat position that if they fail to raise the debt ceiling we will default on our debt. Even Krauthammer was on Hannity tonight saying they will need to raise the debt ceiling. Trump and Allen West were both right when they said tonight we have no leadership in the country right now.
since the Ryan plan steadily increases the debt over the next decade. Only a budget that eliminates - not reduces - the yearly budget deficit would halt the increase in the debt.
Poll: Most Americans say Medicare is worth the cost
Exactly....in fact Ryan is full of BS, since he claims to cut 5 or 6 trillion but actually does the oppisite....in his first ten years, he INCREASE THE DEBT BY FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS.
YOU gots good quotes PGalt.
Ping
This poses an interesting situation. Polls showed voters against a government shutdown but are for not raising this limit.
Not raising it at all is equivalent to forcing about $1.4 trillion dollars of spending cuts over a year. It took weeks for house Republicans to get a $40B cut FY11 budget deal that turned out to be only $500 Million in net cuts. That is going from $500M to $1.4T in cuts, that is just 2800 times the spending cuts of the recent deal. These are the same voters that overwhelming oppose any cuts in medicare that oppose the debt limit increase. Yep, that's going to happen LOL.
The real question is, what will this deal really look like?
The fine print says:
543 Republicans, which they weighted down to 309 (25%)
277 Democrats, which they weighted up to 409 (33%)
404 Independents, which they weighted up to 506 (41%).
How do they figure out the weights? From another poll?
“He will raise the limit. He will claim he was forced to. What a scam.”
Already stated that he would go along with raising the debt ceiling on Hannity’s radio show last week, said that it was the “responsible thing to do”.
I hope that the voters can rid the congress of Boehner in 2012 as well as the kenyan!
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