Poll: Latest Budget Deal News Not What Americans Want To Hear

Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images – Lawmakers are due back in Washington on Tuesday. With a budget deal expected this week, congressional leaders hope to finish work quickly and leave town for the holidays as soon as Friday.

The budget deal news claiming lawmakers are in the midst of finalizing a short-term agreement this week, isn’t what Americans want from Washington.

It is typically the case that the American people foresee political events before politicians make them, and it is no different with the new budget deal both sides insist is close. A new Rasmussen national survey found that 66 percent of Americans think a long-term budget deal to avoid a partial government shutdown was likely, and they were right.

(Also Read: Budget Deal Reportedly In Sight, But Grand Bargain Nowhere In Sight)

Though the new budget deal tinkers around the serious issues, 56 percent would prefer a long-term budget deal that cuts spending instead, while just 12 percent agree with the Democrats’ premise of the sequester and extending long-term unemployment benefits, saying they would like to see spending increase.

Most politicians would clearly like to leave the budget as is to avoid making any difficult decisions, but only 25 percent say they want to keep federal spending roughly the same.

In a separate yet recent Rasmussen survey, 61 percent of American voters said they expected federal spending to increase under President Obama, which is the highest measurement on the question since November of 2010, and the 61 percent are correct.

A new report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services projected the president’s health care law is set to increase total federal health expenditures to $5 trillion by the year 2022.

(Also Read: ObamaCare Cost To Push Health Expenditures To $5 Trillion By 2022)

Just 14 percent of American voters think spending will go down 21 percent believe it will stay about the same.

Though recent Congressional Budget Office projections deficit slowdowns over the next two years, annual deficits will be exploding again in 2016 as the baby-boom generation enters retirement, setting the debt on a potentially uncorrectable trajectory.