CNN poll says: Americans support the American Jobs ActFollow

As is often the case with large omnibus bills, when surveyed about individual aspects of the bill, most people approve of the components.

But rhetoric from opponents clouds the bill, casting doubt in the minds of even those who support those components. (E.g. death panels for the Affordable Healthcare Act. Even though the real death panels are the insurance processors who deny claims as part of a means of cost saving.)

Some interesting breakdowns of the tax increase bit here:

 
 
E. Increasing the taxes paid by people who make more than 250 thousand dollars a year 
Base = Total Sample 
                                Total    Men    Women   White   Non-White 
                                -----   -----   -----   -----   --------- 
Favor                            63%     59%     66%     58%       75% 
Oppose                           37%     40%     34%     41%       25% 
No opinion                        1%      1%      *       1%        * 
Sampling Error                +/-3.0  +/-4.5  +/-4.5  +/-3.5    +/-7.0 
                                           18-      35-      50-             Under    50 and 
                                Total      34       49       64      65+       50     Older 
                                -----    -----    -----    -----    -----    -----    ------ 
Favor                            63%      65%      63%      59%      63%      64%       61% 
Oppose                           37%      34%      37%      41%      36%      35%       39% 
No opinion                        1%       1%       *        1%       *        1%        1% 
Sampling Error                +/-3.0   +/-8.5   +/-7.0   +/-5.5   +/-5.5   +/-5.5    +/-4.0 
                                        Under   $50K      No        Attended 
                                Total    $50K   or more   College   College 
                                -----   -----   -------   -------   -------- 
Favor                            63%     67%       59%       65%        61% 
Oppose                           37%     32%       41%       34%        39% 
No opinion                        1%      1%        *         1%         * 
Sampling Error                +/-3.0  +/-5.0    +/-4.5    +/-5.5     +/-3.5 
                                         Demo-    Indep-    Repub-    Lib-     Mod-     Conser- 
                                Total    crat     endent    lican     eral     erate    vative 
                                -----    -----    ------    ------    -----    -----    ------- 
Favor                            63%      83%       63%       37%      85%      68%       43% 
Oppose                           37%      17%       35%       62%      15%      30%       57% 
No opinion                        1%       *         1%        *        *        1%        * 
Sampling Error                +/-3.0   +/-5.5    +/-5.0    +/-6.0   +/-6.5   +/-5.0    +/-5.0 
                                         North    Mid-                                Sub- 
                                Total    east     west     South    West     Urban    urban    Rural 
                                -----    -----    -----    -----    -----    -----    -----    ----- 
Favor                            63%      67%      61%      61%      62%      67%      64%      53% 
Oppose                           37%      32%      37%      38%      38%      33%      34%      46% 
No opinion                        1%       *        2%       *        *        *        1%       1% 
Sampling Error                +/-3.0   +/-6.5   +/-6.5   +/-5.5   +/-6.5   +/-5.5   +/-4.5   +/-6.5 
                                       Tea Pty  Tea Pty  Tea Pty 
                                Total  Support  Neutral   Oppose 
                                -----  -------  -------  ------- 
Favor                            63%      25%      68%       84% 
Oppose                           37%      75%      32%       16% 
No opinion                        1%       *        *         * 
Sampling Error                +/-3.0   +/-6.0   +/-5.0    +/-5.5

* percentage less than 1%

In other words, Gbaji's "people oppose more taxes" in the other thread is only around a third of the population.

(I wish we had a table function or a "preserve spacing" option on this forum.)

Edited, Oct 18th 2011 3:10pm by catwho

Edited, Oct 18th 2011 3:12pm by catwho

The bill and its components are two entirely different things. Americans don't support the American Jobs Act.


I wish you knew how to use the [p r e][/ p r e] tags.

The third that counts.

I would have liked to see a sub-category for people who make over $250,000/year.

CNN is the one talking about the legislation, and pointing out that if Congresscritters were actually voting on what 63% of Americans want, they'd have passed the bill.

That's probably because it's stupid by even your standards.

No, they don't. And even if "they" did, it still would not equate to "them" supporting the bill as a whole. The problem is the issue of who "they" are. They is made up of a collection of people. While a majority of people might support component1, and component2, component3, and component4, unless it's a majority made up of the same people, this does not equate to support for the bill itself.

People will tend to only support a whole bill if most of the provisions are things they like and *none* of the provisions are things that they dislike strongly. The problem with the jobs bill is that Obama attempts to please all the people all the time by putting in things designed (on paper) to appeal to this group or that group, but each of these things is a deal breaker to another group. His language when selling the bill indicates this. You didn't notice how he kept highlighting specific aspects of the bill, saying how X group/party should like this part so they should vote for the bill?


I honestly don't believe he expected this bill to pass. It's the exact opposite of how you write a bill if you intend it to pass. His intent appears to have been to write a bill he knows contains enough poison pills that it wont pass, but enough "good things" that he can point to those things and blame Republicans for failing to help them become law. It's part of his campaign, nothing more. I suspect he underestimated how unpopular it would be among Democrats too though, because he didn't get enough support from his own party to really pin the bills failure on the GOP. They'll try anyway of course!

That's more or less what is happening. But the political capital of the president getting "his" jobs bill passed (or having it blocked by evil conservatives) is what the pundits are talking about.

Yeah, hold your breath until that happens and you'll occupy a spot at Forest Lawn.

I think the point here is that it wont be presented that way. The "pieces" will be put into other legislation not bearing Obama's name and will not be the pieces that Obama was really pushing for in the first place. A small handful of the things he was trying to use to convince people that conservatives should support his bill will likely find their way into other legislation.

But there wont be anything that Obama can point to and claim he helped happen. Part of that is just politics, but a good portion is that most of those things aren't things Obama really wanted, but was willing to play lip service to in order to make himself appear non-partisan.

Some of them. But that's like the coach of the losing team pointing out that the winning team "hit the ball and scored points", and he asked his team to do the exact same thing. So it's kinda like he won too!



Ok. Maybe you're not reading properly, or I'm not being clear enough. What I'm saying is that there will be fewer things he did like being passed, and more things he didn't like. It's absolutely a loss for him politically.

The things that the GOP will pass in other legislation are the things that Obama didn't really care about one way or the other, but padded his own bill with in order to try to make it look like something the GOP should support (how did you fail to get this). The things Obama really wanted aren't going to be passed. That's why it's a loss politically. Not only does the big jobs bill he essentially staked his political reputation on fail miserably, but the concessions he was trying to use to get the GOP on board probably will pass in one form or another (how can he oppose those things now that he's on record having proposed them?), but the core components he wanted the GOP to give in on will not pass in any form.


It was a political disaster in pretty much every measurable way. Obama just isn't very good at politics unless he's got full control of the table. He doesn't know how to actually compromise and get a successful deal. I'll give you a hint: Writing your own legislation in secret without consulting with the other party (or much with his own apparently) and then unveiling it in a big production and insisting that the other side should support it because you think it's something they should support *isn't* how you get bipartisan legislation passed. His whole approach was pretty much amateur hour.

If we assume he is incapable of learning from past mistakes, then we could assume based on his past actions tht he wanted the bill to pass because he believes that government spending can create jobs in excess of any economic harm caused by said spending. You get that this is the "core" of his jobs bill, right? Everything else was window dressing designed to make it look like a more moderate bill.

If we assume that he has learned his lesson from the failure of the stimulus bill, then we're left with a more cynical conclusion: He knows that his plan can't work, but can't/wont propose anything that will for ideological reasons, so he proposed a bill he knew the GOP would not pass in the hopes of being able to pin the phantom jobs lost (because his bill didn't pass) on them in the next election.

Pretty much everyone who has more than a passing familiarity with politics has arrived at that second conclusion btw. You're free to stick your head in the sand and think that this was anything more than a hamfisted political move by Obama, but you're in a pretty small and naive minority.






It's not a guess though. The GOP isn't going to write much less pass bills that contain the same sort of spending on jobs that the Obama bill contained within it. Thus, there will be "fewer of the things he did like" being passed. The only way for my statement to not be true is if suddenly the GOP lose their collective minds and start proposing the exact legislation which they've been opposing strongly for years. I suppose if you've bought fully into the "both parties are the same and just play partisan games" you might think that. But most people (like myself) understand that there are actual ideological differences between the parties, and this is a big one.


We will certainly see some minor parts of the jobs will appear in other legislation, but it wont be because Obama proposed it in the jobs bill, but because they were good ideas (many of them originally proposed by Republicans) that Obama tossed into his bill as a sweetener. There will be some tax cuts, but only of the kind the GOP thinks are worth while (and likely far more even handed unlike the selectively targeted ones Obama proposed). There may even be some infrastructure spending. But then we pass infrastructure spending bills every year. It's a matter of scale and *why* the spending is passed. The GOP doesn't think that government spending creates jobs on balance. If we're doing something worth doing anyway then the employment of people to do it is an incidental positive, but we should never make the mistake of creating government work for the purpose of creating jobs.


That's the fundamental difference of viewpoint and you're not going to see the GOP adopt the Dems position on this. Why should they?