What They Told Us: Reviewing Last Week's Key Polls
(excerpt)

RASMUSSEN REPORTS

President Obama is quickly learning that being president is harder than just talking about it. Support for the economic recovery plan that he was pushing hard by week’s end is falling. For the first time, a plurality of voters nationwide oppose the $800-billion-plus plan presently working its way through Congress. Release of the Rasmussen Reports survey with that finding sent shivers through Capitol Hill and encouraged efforts by Senate moderates to cut $100 billion or more, much of it new spending, out of the plan.

News reports indicate that the Senate will vote on its version of the recovery plan early next week, setting up intense negotiations with the House of Representatives where a more expensive plan was adopted. Whatever emerges from Congress, 50% of voters say it is at least somewhat likely to make things worse.

In an effort to cut back the new spending Democrats in both houses of Congress have proposed, Republicans argue that efforts should be made to fix the housing market first before attempting to stimulate other parts of the economy. Voters are evenly divided over whether Congress should attempt to “fix housing first.”

But as Scott Rasmussen points out, “Something shifted in the political dialogue … when the House version of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act failed to pick up a single Republican vote.”

Perhaps thanks to controversy over several of his Cabinet nominees and his strong advocacy of the increasingly unpopular recovery plan, Obama ended the week with just 38% of the nation’s voters saying they Strongly Approve of his performance. He was below the 40% level for four straight days in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Approval Index despite never falling below that number previously either as president or president-elect.