Jason

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Large majorities of Americans support President Barack Obama's plans to revive the economy and his efforts to work across party lines, according to a pair of public opinion polls released on Monday.

One month into his presidency, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found 68 percent of Americans approve of Obama's job performance.

Sixty-four percent of respondents supported the administration's $787 billion economic stimulus package and the same percentage backed his proposal to prevent housing foreclosures, the Washington Post reported.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090224/...us_obama_polls

bry623

Not me!!!!!!!

kinbard

Throwing non-existant money after bad money?

simpswr

. . and the alternatives are???

kinbard

For starters, stop negligent spending. Is now a good time to be sending money to rebuild Gaza? To study a rat? Things like that. Just my opinion.

simpswr

How much of a percentage is that to the total package?

kinbard

Who knows. But if we always do what we alway done...

yustr

I think its a crappy bill - those tax cuts do nothing to stimulate anything but republican's ... Typical republican rant: times are good, cut taxes; times are bad, cut taxes.

What are you all going to buy with your $500? Oh wait, its spread out over a year: $500/26=$19.23. Go buy a house, a car or a new flat screen. Tell'em you'll pay $20 every two weeks.

Business taxes are based on profits too. Make less, pay less tax. Make more pay more. Any business you know ever said "I don't want to pay more tax so I'll turn down more profit?" Now bring up other taxes - licenses, property, inventory, utility - and make it on a large enough scale and business will listen. But these are not included in the deal.

I think it should have been half the size but with 100% spent on infrastructure projects. Put people to work and you don't need extra unemployment insurance.

Canaanabolaanan

I like how none of these are actual alternatives. That sounds perfectly republican

I do appreciate not being wasteful, and I agree with you that we shouldn't study a rat nor build up Gaza. We've got our own mess to look after right now. Although, I'm still in support of the foreign aid we provide to fight against AIDS and poverty. I think those are pretty significant goals.

But I feel as if there's a giant, leaning tree with roots underneath the village. And republicans only want to let it fall because they can't think of any other way to take care of it, even though it will collapse half the village.

Or another analogy: a computer application is freezing up, and all your work is unsaved. Sure you can reboot it, but that doesn't protect what's at risk. Maybe a virus scan or Ctrl/alt/del would get you options to consider what's causing the mess. But you guys are willing to cut all loses and just hit the power button, as if it's too much to think about an actual solution.

kinbard

Well, what is your criteria as far as an alternative? To me, spending money that is not there just doesn't make sense. Especially in a fruitless way. The American mentality of today is "I want it and I want it now:", as opposed to "every penny counts". It took a while to get into this mess, its going to take a while to get out. Everyone needs to buckle down, live below their means. Quit chasing the "American Dream" lie. BTW, I'm neither republican, democrat, liberal, conservative or any of those other terms. I guess I could be called a realist

Tumbleweed36

Aha, we finally agree on something!

sobeit

I am just taking the wait and see attitude about it. I do believe there is a lot of pork in it so I hope the bbq is done right.

kinbard

Really, that is all we can do right now. Its just odd that people are looking to the government to get us out of this mess. Hasn't worked so far, and I seriously doubt it ever will. By the people, for the people is just a term thrown around with no real meaning anymore.

Canaanabolaanan

I'm no economist, and I've only heard briefly about the Keynesian economic theory, but it seems logical that, if the business sector is laying off hundreds of thousands of jobs, and people are consequently conserving money, the economy is negatively effected, and more job losses will result. It's a negative cycle. Keynesian economics then argues that the public sector (the dreaded gov't) should spend money to get people working to get people spending to stimulate the economy and stop the cycle. From this perspective, it makes sense.

I understand that the gov't is notorious for badly managing public money, being corrupt, etc, etc. Unfortunately, we haven't seen much better out of the banking, housing, nor automotive industries. Nor Wall Street. And I also don't believe that just because an idea hasn't been perfected, nor even done well on a massive scale, in its primitive forms, that further revisions and applications are immediately doomed to fail. That is, just because it failed before in a more infant state, doesn't guarantee it to continue that fate.

And the press and technology are becoming more pervasive. Scandals and fraud are being exposed on a much grander scale, and public interest and ability to communicate and give feedback are increasingly more intense and active. I think the ball is set in motion to push for a more transparent government. And given the scrutiny of the masses, old ideas that have failed to work may yet be successful, because they won't continually be strained by the surreptitious and corrupt puppet masters.

Perhaps I'm still naive. But I don't see success as an impossibility.

Edit - Oop, as far as alternatives go, I don't consider a "stay the course" or "let the market take care of it" approach an alternative. That is what we're doing now. And it doesn't seem to be heavily successful. So an alternative would be an idea in contrast to the stimulus package and "staying the course."