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54% Say ‘No’ To All Bailouts
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Bailouts, bailouts everywhere, and not an end in sight.

The automakers want more, the banks want more, even the nation’s biggest insurance company is back because its $150-billion bailout last year wasn’t enough. And what about the people who can’t pay their mortgages? Taxpayers are beginning to wonder if the U.S. Treasury is going to run out of money.

So what do Americans think about all these bailout requests?

Given the choice between federal bailouts for the auto companies, the finance industry and financially trouble homeowners or no bailouts for any of them, 54% say no bailouts period.

Just 26% support bailouts for all three, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Twenty percent (20%) aren’t sure which course is better to follow.

Investors, with their eyes on the financial markets, are even more strongly opposed. Sixty-two percent (62%) of investors say “no” to all three bailouts, with 24% who favor them. Twenty-eight percent (28%) of non-investors support the bailouts, but 45% are opposed.

Confidence as measured by the Rasmussen Investor Index hit a record low on Tuesday – for the second day in a row.

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The results are perhaps not surprising, given the high level of opposition to the bailout proposals as they’ve been announced.

President Obama is expected to champion all of the bailout initiatives in his first address to Congress Tuesday night. Thirty-nine percent (39%) of voters Strongly Approve of Obama’s performance in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday, while 25% Strongly Disapprove.

Forty-two percent (42%) of Democrats favor the three bailouts, but 33% are opposed. Twenty-five percent (25%) are undecided.

Among Republicans, on the other hand, 80% oppose the bailouts, with just seven percent (7%) supporting them. Thirteen percent (13%) are not sure. This helps to explain why the $787-billion economic stimulus plan passed both the House and Senate with only three Republican votes. Confidence in that plan has fallen in the week since Obama signed it into law.

Americans not affiliated with either major political party oppose the bailouts by a 55% to 25% margin, with 21% not sure.

Fifty-six percent (56%) of homeowners are opposed, compared to 47% of non-homeowners. Higher-income Americans are more opposed to the bailouts than those who earn less.

Most African-Americans (52%) support the bailouts, while the majority of whites (57%) oppose them.

General Motors and Chrysler last week asked the federal government for another $22 billion in loans, but 64% of voters are opposed to providing any additional taxpayer-backed loans for the embattled automakers.

Earlier this month, the Obama Administration announced a plan costing up to $2.5 trillion to help the troubled U.S. financial system. But 56% of Americans oppose giving bankers any additional government money or any guarantees backed by the government.

Last week just after Obama announced his $275-billion taxpayer-backed plan to help as many as nine million Americans avoid foreclosure through measures including subsidized mortgage payments, 45% of Americans said they oppose subsidizing mortgage payments, while 38% thought it was a good idea.

At the beginning of this week, however, 55% of Americans said the federal government would be rewarding bad behavior by providing mortgage subsidies to financially troubled homeowners.

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Rasmussen Reports is an electronic publishing firm specializing in the collection, publication, and distribution of public opinion polling information.

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Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, has been an independent pollster for more than a decade.