A billboard showing the national debt in Washington on Thursday. (Mandel Ngan\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\nAnd while a majority of Republicans do favor cutting aid to Ukraine (63%), the share who want to slash spending on the military (15%), Social Security (12%) or Medicare (12%) is about as minuscule as it is among Americans as a whole.<\/p>\n
Further complicating matters for House conservatives is the fact that many Americans don\u2019t really get what the debt limit is all about \u2014 but the more they learn, the less they want Congress to hold it hostage. Less than half of U.S. adults (42%), for instance, correctly understand that the debt limit must be raised \u201cto allow the federal government to pay for spending that Congress has already authorized\u201d; more either say the U.S. regularly raises the debt limit \u201cto authorize new federal spending\u201d (25%) or are not sure (33%).<\/p>\n
In that light, it\u2019s not surprising that when Yahoo News and YouGov asked a random half of poll respondents whether they \u201cfavor or oppose raising the U.S. debt limit\u201d \u2014 with no additional context \u2014 more said they opposed it (40%) than said they favored it (28%). Yet when the other half were asked the same question after hearing a description of the likeliest consequences \u2014 \u201cdefaulting on America\u2019s past debts\u201d and failing to pay \u201cSocial Security benefits and military salaries\u201d while \u201csparking a possible recession\u201d \u2014 the numbers completely flipped, with 45% now saying they favored raising the limit and just 24% saying they were opposed.<\/p>\n\n\n
\n
And meanwhile, about one-third of Americans say they\u2019re \u201cnot sure\u201d how to respond to any questions about the debt limit \u2014 suggesting that opposition to the GOP\u2019s hardball tactics has further room to grow if the U.S. does default and economists\u2019 worst predictions come to pass.<\/p>\n
The upshot is that Speaker McCarthy has his work cut out for him going forward. For now, pluralities of Americans (43%) and Republicans (47%) are not sure if they view him favorably or unfavorably, and they\u2019re equally uncertain whether they approve or disapprove of the job he\u2019s doing as speaker (45% and 47% not sure, respectively).<\/p>\n
Yet McCarthy\u2019s early reviews among all U.S. adults \u2014 20% favorable vs. 37% unfavorable; 24% approve vs. 31% disapprove \u2014 are negative, on the whole. And Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are divided over whether the House GOP should have chosen McCarthy (32%) or someone else (31%) as speaker.<\/p>\n
At the same time, sizable pluralities of Americans oppose many of the reported concessions that the Californian made to \u201cpersuade holdouts in his own party,\u201d including giving the anti-McCarthy holdouts seats on powerful committees (42% oppose, 24% favor); allowing any one member to force votes on an unlimited number of amendments to spending bills (42% oppose, 23% favor); and allowing any one member to force a vote to remove the speaker at any time (37% oppose, 30% favor).<\/p>\n\n\n
\n
Speaker Kevin McCarthy at a news conference in the U.S. Capitol\u2019s Statuary Hall on Jan. 12. (Tom Williams\/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\nOther reported concessions, however, are more popular: posting legislation at least 72 hours in advance of a vote so lawmakers have time to review it (68% favor, 10% oppose); creating a special committee to investigate the Justice Department and the FBI (51% favor, 27% oppose); and ending pandemic-era congressional voting by proxy, which allowed members of Congress to cast votes without being in Washington, D.C. (46% favor, 29% oppose).<\/p>\n
For McCarthy to succeed, then, the trick will be placating his party\u2019s most extreme members without succumbing to their least popular demands. Following the recent House speaker fight, just 26% of Americans say Republicans \u201chave the right priorities\u201d \u2014 down 5 points since late October \u2014 while more than twice as many (54%) say they are \u201cnot paying enough attention to America\u2019s real problems.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perceptions of Democrats aren\u2019t quite as bad \u2014 30% \u201chave the right priorities\u201d vs. 52% \u201cnot paying enough attention to America\u2019s real problems\u201d \u2014 with no significant changes since August.<\/p>\n
Likewise, Americans are now 20 points more likely to say Republicans have a greater interest in \u201cdamaging\u201d the other party (48%) than \u201cpassing legislation\u201d (28%) \u2014 and just 6 points more likely to say the same of Democrats (at 42% to 36%, respectively).<\/p>\n
_________<\/p>\n
The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,538 U.S. adults interviewed online from Jan. 12 to 16, 2023. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, 2020 election turnout and presidential vote, baseline party identification and current voter registration status. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Baseline party identification is the respondent\u2019s most recent answer given prior to March 15, 2022, and is weighted to the estimated distribution at that time (32% Democratic, 27% Republican). Respondents were selected from YouGov\u2019s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S. adults. The margin of error is approximately 2.7%.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nSource link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Treasury Department building in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. (Saul Loeb\/AFP via Getty Images) By a massive 30-point margin, Americans say Republicans\u2019 protracted battle earlier this month to elect a new House speaker is a sign that \u201cCongress is dysfunctional\u201d (55%) rather than \u201cfunctioning as intended\u201d (25%), according to a new Yahoo News\/YouGov poll. And …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44423,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[161],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44422"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}