WASHINGTON–While Congress is deadlocked over solving the looming fiscal cliff crisis, a new survey by the independent research organization NORC at the University of Chicago, found that 79 percent of those polled want lawmakers in Congress to work together to get things done.
“As the 2012 presidential election campaign reached its final weeks, we designed this survey to find out what Americans think about the policy issues that the president and new Congress will face, including the fiscal cliff, and what course of action they think we should take to deal with it,” said Kirk Wolter, Senior Fellow and Executive Vice President, Survey Research with NORC at the University of Chicago. “We found that a majority of Americans overwhelmingly prefer that their own representatives in D.C. work with others and make compromises, even compromises that include policies that they dislike.”
From NORC: The public did not see the budget deficit as the most important problem facing the U.S. right now. According to the survey, when asked about problems facing our country:
– 91.8 percent of respondents said that unemployment is a very important problem
– 74.1 percent of respondents said that the budget deficit is a very important problem
– 55.8 percent of respondents said that inflation is a very important problem
An interesting find: the amount of support to cut defense spending.
According to the survey:
– 35.1 percent said it was ok to increase taxes to cut the federal budget deficit
– 28.5 percent said it was ok to cut spending on domestic programs to cut the budget deficit
– 51.5 percent said it was ok to cut spending on national defense to cut the budget deficit
And there is support for letting taxes rise on the top earners, according to the survey: “While 35.1 percent of respondents support a general increase in taxes to cut the federal budget deficit, 60 percent of our respondents favor increasing the income tax rates for households with more than $250,000 in annual income. A scant six percent propose to reduce the top tax rates.”
Surveyed: 1,125 adults was conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago conducted by
– Professor Mark Hansen, University of Chicago
– Professor Andrea Campbell, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
– Professor Stephen Ansolabehere, Harvard University
– Professor Benjamin Page, Northwestern University