Measuring the Public's Priorities: Stimulus vs. Deficit Pew Research Center June 18-21 priorities If you were setting the priorities you for setting the Spending more to help the economy recover government would these days would you days place on. [ROTATED] would a higher you priority Reducing the budget deficit place on. [ROTATED] higher CBS News New York Times, June 12 16 The federal the government national should spend money to NBC News Wall Street Journal, June 12-15
The latest survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press finds the public evenly divided over whether deficit reduction or stimulus spending is the higher priority for the government right now. Among 1,005 adults interviewed over landline and cell phones June 18-21, 48% place a higher priority on “spending more to help the economy recover” while 46% prioritize “reducing the budget deficit.”
Two other recent national polls, which gave arguments on both sides of the issue, found the public giving greater priority to deficit reduction than to stimulating the economy. Both the CBS/New York Times and NBC/Wall Street Journal surveys, released last week, made efforts to explain the pros and cons of stimulus spending and deficit reduction, and both found majorities supporting the latter option.
The NBC/WSJ survey asked if the president and Congress should worry more about “boosting the economy even though it may mean larger budget deficits now and in the future” or “keeping the budget deficit down even though it may mean it will take longer for the economy to recover.” When these countervailing arguments are provided, they find more siding with deficit reduction by a 23-point margin (58% vs. 35%). The CBS/NYT survey asked if the government “should spend money to stimulate the national economy, even if it means increasing the budget deficit” or “should NOT spend money to stimulate the national economy and should instead focus on reducing the budget deficit.” This formulation also found more favoring deficit reduction, but by a narrower 11-point margin (52% vs. 41%).
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