Americans have a much dimmer view of each of the Big Three automakers than they did two years ago, but 41% still believe the U.S. automobile industry is very important to the financial stability of the overall economy. That, however, is down from 49% in 2007.
Americans now know that the "change we can believe in," which President Obama promised, means a taxes-optional administration. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner rode out the bad news about his failure to pay $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes on income he earned while working for the International Monetary Fund, and still won confirmation. The man now in charge of the IRS says it was "an innocent mistake."
The Rasmussen Employment Index, a monthly measure of U.S. worker confidence in the employment market, fell six more points in January to 61.1. That’s the fourth straight month that the Index has fallen to a record low. Since September, workplace confidence has fallen 27 points.
Most American adults under 30 (54%) belong to an Internet social networking site such as Facebook or MySpace.
So why would the estimable Sen. Judd Gregg (R., N.H.) quit his job to become commerce secretary in the Obama administration?
Forty-two percent (42%) of U.S. voters say President Barack Obama is governing on a bipartisan basis while 39% say he is governing as a partisan Democrat.
Eighty-eight percent (88%) of American adults say the executives of companies that need federal money to stay in business should not receive bonuses. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that only eight percent (8%) believe the bonuses are okay while five percent (5%) are not sure.
They called it right. After one of the most exciting endings in Super Bowl history, the Pittsburgh Steelers were the winners – as 55% of American adults who planned to watch the game predicted.
Just 11% of U.S. voters think America should apologize to Iran for “crimes” against the Islamic country – one of the prerequisites demanded by the Iranian president before he will agree to meet with President Barack Obama.
During January, the number of Americans who say they are not affiliated with either the Republican or the Democratic Party rose by a full percentage point to 26.6%.
Of course California's prison inmates are entitled to reasonable 21st-century health care. Unfortunately for taxpayers, Clark Kelso, the federal receiver in charge of California's prison health care has, as state Attorney General Jerry Brown noted at a news conference last week, a "gold-plated wish list" for California's prison health care system.
Something shifted in the political dialogue last week when the House version of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act failed to pick up a single Republican vote.
For the time being at least, it looks like political labels don’t matter as much to Americans as they face an uncertain economic future.
Wednesday night's House tally on the Democratic stimulus package, where not a single Republican voted in favor, was another shot across the bow for this incredibly unmanageable $900 billion behemoth of a program that truly will not stimulate the economy.
Despite the Internet’s rise in popularity, a new Rasmussen Reports survey finds that a plurality of adults (44%) spend more time talking to others on the phone than through other types of communication. Less than a third (31%) mostly converse with others in person, while 17% say they communicate by text message or e-mail.
There's a debate going on in some Republican circles over which groups of the electorate the party should target.
Ronald Reagan isn’t just a Republican thing anymore.
Ten days into his presidency as the details of his historic economic rescue plan become clearer, Barack Obama still enjoys the confidence of a majority of voters that he knows how to handle the struggling U.S. economy.
How fortunate for Barack Obama that Rush Limbaugh, big radio personality and leader of the instinctual far right, has yet to retire to a sunny island with his bottles of pills. At a moment when Republicans on Capitol Hill feel they must pretend to negotiate with the popular new president over spending to revive the economy, he blurted out what they really feel.
This is the Republicans' big contribution to our economic recovery: They want to make sure that undocumented immigrants who pay taxes using tax identification numbers don't get a cent of their tax money back in the refunds enacted by Congress. Oh, yes, and they want rich people to get tax refunds.
