The Senate is scheduled to vote today on an $838-billion economic stimulus plan, but 58% of U.S. voters say most members of Congress will not understand what is in the plan before they vote on it.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 24% believe most of Congress will understand the contents of the 700-page-plus plan before they vote. Nineteen percent (19%) are not sure.

Two-thirds of the nation’s voters (69%) lack confidence that Congress knows what it is doing when it comes to addressing the country’s current economic problems. Just 29% are even somewhat confident in the legislators.

Fifty-two percent (52%) of Democrats have at least some confidence, a view shared by just 16% of unaffiliated voters and 12% of Republicans.

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Voters strongly agree with the perspective that “No matter how bad things are, Congress can always find a way to make them worse.” Fifty-eight percent (58%) share that view, and only 26% disagree.

Sixty-eight (68%) of Republicans and 63% of unaffiliated voters agree with that negative assessment of Congress. Democrats are more evenly divided: 46% agree, and 37% do not.

By a 45% to 36% margin, liberal voters disagree that Congress can always make a bad situation worse. But solid majorities of conservative and moderate voters take the opposite view.
Overall, the majority of voters already think Congress is doing a poor job as it struggles with the current economic crisis.

If the stimulus passes the Senate as expected with all 58 Democrats and three Republicans voting for it, senators will meet with representatives of the House to reconcile differences with the $819-billion version of the plan that body passed on January 28. Eleven Democratic congressmen and all of the Republicans in the House voted against that plan.

In mid-January, 58% of Americans were not confident that their political leaders knew what they were doing when it came to efforts to right the troubled economy.

Sixty-seven percent (67%) of Republicans and 66% of voters not affiliated with either major party do not believe most members of Congress will know what is in the economic stimulus plan before they vote on it. A plurality of Democrats agree.

Most voters don’t think Congress plays by the rules anyway.

Voters are evenly divided on President Obama’s insistence that the country faces economic catastrophe if Congress does not quickly pass the stimulus plan. The president repeated that warning again Monday night in his first prime-time news conference as president, but most voters want the plan to include more tax cuts and less new government spending.

Congressional Republicans argue just that point, that the stimulus plan needs more tax relief and much less spending. In a speech to his fellow Democrats last Thursday, though, Obama expressed surprise at GOP criticism of the plan’s new spending proposals. “It’s spending. That’s the whole point,” the president said of the stimulus plan.

But 48% of U.S. voters say that, generally speaking, increased government spending is bad for the economy. Thirty-five percent (35%) disagree.

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